Ever wished the Wizard of Oz was for real? That a place existed where scarecrows could really talk and lions could shed a tear? Wouldn't it be splendid if tornadoes set houses back down in one piece like happens in the Land of the Munchkins. But they don't. Yet, we can go off on journeys of the imagination that can scratch the itch we have to experience some magic, in spite of the sometimes sobering realities of job pressures, health calamities, divorce, crime, and consumer debt. Perhaps, we can even retreat into childhood while no one is looking. It seems we didn't have these problems in childhood. If we did, no one told us about them.
"Magic" describes one of my late night forays back into childhood with a pack of kids that live down the street. The kids are growing up now, discovering the opposite sex and alcohol, working to pay for cars and college. We don't do night wanderings now but perhaps when these kids are old like me, someone will ring their door bells late at night and invite them "to come out and play." Maybe they will remember that I came out to play when they rang my bell.
These same kids in their early impressionable years wanted to impress me and on occasion would bring me one of those 12" push-up popsicles. On one special occasion I was even invited to go dumpster diving with them. "He Who Gives Gets Ice Cream" explains how making free cabinets, ice cream, and dumpster diving are cosmically related. It's magic.
My immediate neighbor is fearful of the dark and keeps high intensity flood lights on all night. This compels me to keep a large piece of cardboard in my bedroom window at night. One January morning I took down the cardboard to be dazzled by a wonderland of winter crystal illuminated by a vermillion sunrise. I stood still, quite dumbfounded by the frozen beauty of the winter day that was before me. "Dawn" reveals there to be magic outside of dreams.
The newspapers tell us about six-year olds committing robbery and five-year olds burning down the neighbor's house. We hear of a high school girl having a baby in the toilet at the high school prom, throwing it into the trash can, and returning to the dance floor. We are warned about the cohort of kids who will soon be in their prime crime-producing years. "Enchanted" presents another view of American kids; one of hope. If you wonder if there is anything inspiring any more about kids, you need to go to the house next door.
My favorite thing about travelling in foreign countries is meeting new friends. This often happens in the least likely places, places like the "#75 Bus." An older woman with a life time of experiences sat next to me on the bus and was quite happy to enrich me with them as we traveled to the city centre. At what turned out to be the same stop for both of us, she invited me to afternoon tea with her in the Eaton's Cafeteria. One individual can do much to change our perceptions of a country. "Diplomat" records my happy experiences on a cold winter day in Canada.
We can often experience great learning from animals, if we only pay attention. Young animals place great trust in their doting parents. Raccoons are especially good parents to their young and will often scout out the land before allowing the young and innocent to venture forth. "Ring-Tailed Confidence" describes a furry example of trust. If a young coon can trust another coon so completely, can we as children of God, not trust our Father in Heaven?
"Green Bowl II" is another reminder that faith goes a long way. Gabriel was telling us that if we exercise faith in those who have the ability to meet our needs, they will come through for us. Gabriel offered an indictment as to how much faith we don't put into our prayers.
Many years ago when I was living in a castle in Northern England, the woman that cleaned my rooms became a close friend. Last year I had an encounter with another chamber maid in Canada. Like her English counterpart, Muriel proved to be an exceptional listener. "House keeper" confirms she did more than merely clean my rooms. She showed me the magic that makes Canada the best kept secret this side of the Atlantic.
Ever wonder where all those jets are going that leave their brilliant contrails at sunset? I often have and sometimes fantasize being on one of them, chasing the sun. "Intersection" puts into words my wondering if there might not be a Divine order to all those empyrean crisscrosses.
I still have a wishbone from last year's Thanksgiving turkey on the kitchen window sill. I'm certain the turkey wishes he still had it. Wishbones are used in a pleasant ritual where we hope to gain a wish. Whoever wins the snap gets his wish. If you wish for your fellow contestant to get her wish, then you win no matter what. "Wishbone" points us towards the Grantor of wishes.
It can be really hard to let someone go we love a lot, even if but for a short while. At 6:30 AM one distant morning I had to let someone go for a long time. "Station" refreshes my memory of that intense moment on the station platform watching her train fade into the distance.
Ever come in out of torrid summer heat into a cool dark building? Many times I have found release from Dante's Inferno in the cool interior of the great cathedrals of Europe. On several occasions I have been blessed, not only with refreshment of body, but also of soul with the rich melodies of other-worldly music. At Durham Cathedral a magnificent evensong at sunset stopped me in my tracks. I melted into a nearby pew. At St. Stephen's in Vienna a boys choir assured me there was more than met the eye. "Sanctuary" keeps the feeling alive for me as I first reverently push through one of those great portals, very quietly.
Have you ever been so frightened or in such pain, that when the terror stopped, you could hardly imagine how wondrous life had just become? I recall the utterly vast relief that came from determining the physicians were wrong and that I was not subject to a neurologic death sentence. "Relief" is a humorous spin of a truly frightening forty-five second span in the life of a deer hunter some eighty-five years ago. In this case 'relief' was not spelled 'R-O-L-A-I-D-S'.
Magic
Want to relive your childhood? Perhaps live it for the first time? Get an elixir of youth? Make sure you answer your front door late at night. If you are really lucky, four or five eager young smiles will greet you in the darkness and ask if you 'can come out to play,' while their parents are off working the late shift. The calendar says my childhood officially ended about thirty years ago. Adults don't 'come out to play' and besides we don't have time; there's way too much to do. I have my calendar filled up a year and a half in advance. Go out and play? On a work night? With the neighborhood kids? Me? Fortunately, as I answered the door, a gentle breeze of wisdom blew over me and instead of saying 'not now, it's too late' I said 'just a minute." I ended a long distance phone call, terminated computer programs, turned off the lights, locked the door, and went out to play at 11 PM.
When I was young I didn't have the neighborhood kids beating a path to my door asking me to come out and play. Besides, everyone knew my mom was a force to not be reckoned with. You didn't think of pounding on our door late at night if you wanted to live long enough to get your driver's license. Any way, I was one of those nerdy kids who hid in the school library at lunch time, and even if my mom wouldn't run them off, no one would have ever come looking for me. But tonight they did.
When it was time to go in they wanted me to come over and see how much the new kittens had grown since I last saw them eighteen hours earlier. Kids keep up with this sort of thing real well. AND they asked me if I wanted one of those long popsicles. Make sure you leave your porch light on.
He Who Gives Gets Ice Cream
Do you ever wonder how the universe really works? Astronomers have tried to figure it out for centuries and have only met with partial success. Skip the science. Astrophysics, religion, chaos theory, and ecology, only explain part of it. I can now tell you what really goes on. Little girls are sometimes the best teachers. They seem to know stuff and I happen to live next to some.
I finally had one of those delicious weekends at home with no place I had to be. Mind you, I am home perhaps one weekend a month. In a month's time I may be in five states or more, during that blissful time between 5 PM on Friday and 8 AM on Monday. With a light fresh breeze, this particular Saturday proved perfect for hiding in the garage and building things. I really like to build things. I had both doors up to partake of the fine air.
Three friends had asked me to build them CD and video tape cabinets for an agreed upon price of $30 each. I was able to offer them such a low price because I was able to use wood that had been discarded from a house demolition. While building these it occurred to me I could give one of these cabinets away rather than sell it. Suddenly, a chore became a delight. I suspect the cabinet turned out better as well.
After completing this first cabinet I loaded it in the car and delivered it to my beneficiary. She was elated. She did pay me after all: a Klondike Bar, still hard from the deep freeze. I stayed a while longer and trimmed her bushes and weed whacked her newly emerging southern jungle. After indulging in my first allergy fit of the season I retreated to the cool shelter of my garage to continue my deeds.
Between allergic sniffles, I completed building another cabinet and was just finishing up the paint job (a nice jet black). It occurred to me that I could give this one away too. I might end up with another Klondike Bar. Not long after deciding to give this one away, Diana came scampering down my drive way. Remember, it was a hot day and I was outside painting. Do you know what she had in her hand? A 12 inch popsicle! Yes, one of those kind you squeeze up through the plastic tube. At the end you get that last bit of colored liquid that is extra sweet. She actually made a special trip to bring me this heavenly delight. I must be living right.
Later on while working on a third cabinet, Diana, Rebecca, and Yana came over to tell me they had found treasure! They wanted me to help them count the spoils. It turns out the people living between our houses had moved the night before and left a lode of riches in their trash. In the dark, with flash lights, we plundered and struck it rich. What did we find? Some really good stuff. Probably the best treasure in Diana's mind was the collection of big three-ring notebooks still containing thousands of pages of sales material for garage doors and attic insulation. Diana and Rebecca had visions of years of school with the fanciest notebooks on campus. I took my car over to this mountain of riches and we took out all the paper and cardboard and boxed it to give to the recycling program. Diana, Rebecca, and Yana squirreled away their grand treasures.
I thought the best stuff was the office supplies. There was all manner of office stuff in there. I am one of those that dreams of winning a shopping spree at Office Depot. I'm an office supply junkie. There's nothing better than a cardboard box full of new pens, yellow post-its, envelopes, labels, and a five pack of colored highlighters. I found Pendeflex hangers, envelopes, manila folders, jumbo rolls of wrapping paper. But this lode proved nearly inexhaustible.
Rebecca lives in a fluorescent pink room along with two parakeets, an Iguana, a Siamese fighting fish, a hamster, a mother cat, and six kittens now about three weeks old. Would you believe we found a full-size comforter in this cache that goes perfect with those pink walls? By this time her mother was out getting in on the action with us.
Remember, I was making cabinets to hold video tapes, Cds, and cassettes and was giving them away. Justice? There was a brown box containing fifty new unopened cassette tapes in plastic boxes. I split the tapes with the girls. I had told them they could have all of them but they didn't want that many. Today I went to the recycling center to dump all the paper and cardboard. In the paper I found a new CD in its original unopened wrapper with a price of $13.95 marked on it. Importantly, I actually really like the CD.
Diana's brother, Harold, just came back from New Orleans from Mardi Gras. In with the rolls of wrapping paper was a sealed tube containing, you guessed it: a Mardi Gras poster. It had a $10 price tag on it. One starts to wonder about the way the universe really works. I used to study astronomy and I never read about the universe working quite this way.
Now since I was building things out of wood, it is reasonable that I would be using nails. Our cosmic treasure hunt turned up a brown bag containing, yes, a pound of #8 common nails, just like the ones I had been using all day!
I have a small clock on my desk at work that uses a weird size of battery. On Friday I noticed that the battery died. I resigned myself to doing without the clock for some weeks until it bothered me enough to go find a replacement battery. Put in the Twilight Zone theme music here. In our stash I found a new package of not one but four of these same odd little batteries! My clock is again telling time. Somehow I know I must be getting near a complete answer to the meaning of life.
I am almost done. I like kitchen stuff. Someday I would like to have an institutional kitchen with all manner of pots and utensils hanging down from the ceiling. Yet, I have been making a dinner plate work as a cutting board for years since I don't have a real cutting board. They say you shouldn't use ones made of wood because of the bugs that grow on them, so I never made one. But wouldn't you know it. There was one of those fancy glass 'boards' with little rubber feet in our mountain of goodies. Also some really fine Tupperware. This was really important because there is a cosmic rift that connects the back of my kitchen cupboards to a black hole. It seems the lids for my Tupperware disappear into this mysterious realm with regularity.
People tell me they mark the beginnings of their holiday season with the arrival of my Christmas card. I am one of those disgusting obsessive compulsive people who has his Christmas cards done the week of Thanksgiving and IN the mail by December 1st. One of the last things to turn up in our covert operation was a full box of those large fancy expensive Christmas cards that businesses send out to impress their would-be clients. With baited breath I opened them to see if they were imprinted with a business name, rendering them useless. They were gloriously blank. Some people are going to think I had a successful year.
We have often heard that it is more blessed to give than receive. This is really true, but receiving is also something I seem to endure pretty well. I suspect you would endure it also. But the most important thing I have learned is that the real currency of the universe is ice cream.
Dawn
Consciousness slinking in on slumber,
dreams give way to reality's fantasy.
Dumbfounded, breathless, in awe;
silent spectral symphonies summon Hope.
Transfixed, golden horizon exclaiming,
vermillion cirrus birth possibility.
Crimson cumulus, aureate with promise,
transect winter's ebony silhouette.
Encrusted snowy matrix aglow,
nascent day drives away darkness of soul.
Frozen daggers of crystalline brilliance,
translucent, point to Firm Foundations.
Willing time to slow motion,
I live a lifetime in moments.
Can I stay home from school today?
Enchanted
Do you ever wonder what the world is coming to? You read in the newspaper about six-year olds committing robbery and five-year olds burning down the neighbor's house because he asked them to stay out of his yard. We are warned about the cohort of kids who will soon be in their prime crime-producing years. Perhaps you wonder if there is anything inspiring any more. You need to go over to the house next door.
Yes, this family struggles a lot. A single mother is raising three energetic kids by herself, financing her venture with a low-paying job working as a night cashier at the 24-hour Wal-Mart. Daddy took off years ago and the kids hardly know who he is. Sound familiar? Yeah, the house is a wreck and falling apart and the yard has never seen a mower, broom, or weed eater since the invention of the internal combustion engine, but there's magic in there. Go to Rebecca's room and you'll know what I mean.
I guess Rebecca to be about ten or eleven now. In this family's chaos Rebecca has created an ordered environment where diverse life flourishes. At the foot of her bed in two cages are large grand parakeets she has kept in prime condition for several years now. Their happy chatter masks the cacophony so often present with fighting siblings. One preens her fine blue feathers while the other struts in his regal emerald finery.
An old aquarium is the warm happy home of a large green Iguana iridescent with good health. I am not sure if it leaked once or not. Anyway. it works perfectly for this reptilian curiosity. Have you every watched how lizards can move their eyes independently of each other? Pretty amazing to watch. Rebecca is always careful about keeping the light adjusted so the temperature is just right for him. I can't tell whether it is a boy or a girl. Somehow I think it must be a boy.
Next to this scaled wonder is a small bowl containing a Siamese fighting fish. It has been there for years. Brightly colored fins signal its contentment. I wonder how something can live a resplendent colorful life for years in something little bigger than my ice tea cup. The water always looks clear.
Downwind of the seasoned fish tank is an old wire cage with a hamster in it. There's plenty of shavings all over the floor, like you would expect around little pet rodents. An old busted radio keeps the top from coming off the cage. If you have never seen a hairless hamster you missed your chance. He got his hair back. Rebecca was actually able to get a veterinarian to help her figure out why her hamster lost all its hair. It turns out it had some rare mineral deficiency and with a diet change and medicine it is once again a small fluff ball of white and brown fur. Don't you wonder in amazement about a girl that would actually carry a hamster to the veterinarian and find a cure for his nakedness? He now seems quite happy in his fully dressed state in spite of potentially threatening room mates.
What kind of roommates? Priscilla is about a year old now and quite the mothering type. If you pull back the mattress from the bed and look under the slats you will see six little fluffs of gray fur being well-tended by their doting mother. Actually, three of the little ones look like mamma who is a fearless tabby who is forever out in the middle of the street. Three of the new-comers are solid gray and take after Papa who is a regal gray Himalayan nomad that wanders the neighborhood seeking out hapless tabbies. Priscilla had six kittens and all are doing quite nicely, thank you. Eyes open, tails up, and just learning how to purr.
I have marvelled for some years at the good care and attentiveness Rebecca has given to these small trusting animals. She lives in a society that is now telling us we need to be afraid of our children. Amazingly, in a universe that is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, Rebecca maintains a bit of order that makes me wonder if she is onto something. I wonder if the answers to questions about life, civility and immortality are somewhere in her room.
#75 Bus
Waiting for the bus,
I didn't know about us.
Hidden in an unlived future,
shared memories not secure;
the bus has yet to come.
There are no more flowers,
winter sun lost its powers;
the bus has yet to come.
Chilled by penetrant rain,
wondering about life's pain;
the bus has yet to come.
How can it really be,
our spirits coming free;
the bus has yet to come.
Our histories collide,
now fused on the inside;
we get off at the same stop.
Ring-Tailed Confidence
Living in the city one rarely sees much exotic wildlife beyond the occasional opossum, most usually observed as a road kill. We have all experienced squirrels that run twelve directions in front of our cars before meeting their vulcanized end under the tires. Indecision can be very costly. Ecologists say that squirrels, opossums and rats are well adapted to urban environments, yet songbirds are in steep decline, we are told, because of the conversion of mixed hardwood forest into parking lots, suburban grass, and street. This only makes the sighting of nice non-rodent critters in the city all the more magical, when it happens.
My dear friend, Jan, has the great fortune of living right in the city in a townhouse that is at the center of some kind of energy vortex that proves appealing to a wide range of beast; large and small, domestic and otherwise. One evening there were five, count 'em, five large deer enjoying the vermillion remnants of a fine sunset from the back lawn. On another occasion, red fox streaked across the wooded realms behind the lawn, seeking succulent fall berries. Easter is celebrated all year by an assortment of fluffy rabbits who find the flower beds truly luscious. The increasing rare songbirds seem to find the arboreal branches there to be safe haven; many pairs often seen tweeting sweet nothings to each other. And a certain raccoon family has discovered nice humans there who put out cat food, just for them, every night.
Raccoons are a lot like house cats; furry, full of antics, and excellent teachers of deeper theological truths. If one turns off the inside lights in Jan's townhouse and sits quietly near the glass patio door, one might just be fortunate enough to see a ring-tailed comedian slink up onto the porch and snatch the cat food before a mere house cat should perchance come along and partake of the goodies. I have been lucky and seen this nocturnal sleuthing for myself.
Jan's son, Jon, was sitting inside recently one evening when he had the good providence to see a large raccoon come up onto the porch to snitch the cat food. Jon observed that this big fella picked up the pieces of food with his hands and never once put his head down to the plate. He maintained Defcon 1. After all, he was in a supposedly dangerous urban environment. After he had his fill of treats he wandered away into the dark shadows and immediately returned with the family. Mama coon, basking in the protection of her guardian, freely put her head down to the plate and ate the tender vittles directly, without putting them in her hands. The two irresistible baby coons ignored all possible danger and frolicked, knowing Mom and Dad would keep them from all harm. All had their fill. Jon was mesmerized by the magic of the moment. Jan was entranced by a lesson in trust.
The Old Testament describes one of the great exploits of Gideon who was trying to even up the odds in a battle scheduled for the next day. Gideon was trusting in sheer manpower to vanquish the foe. The Almighty had a lesson for Gideon. Gideon figured he might actually pull off a victory with his ten thousand men, assembled with no small measure of angst. But the enemy had thirty thousand well-trained well-rested warriors anxious to see some action.
All of Gideon's men went down to the river to drink of the cool water. The large majority got down on their knees and put their head down to the water. A far smaller number stayed on their feet and reached down with cupped hand while keeping their heads up. While his men were taking refreshment, Gideon heard from God. He told Gideon to pink slip all those who got down on their knees. With thirty thousand enemy troops massing for early morning fireworks, it didn't make a lot of sense to Gideon to down-size his army of ten thousand by ninety-seven hundred men. As expected, Gideon protested. God exercised His CEO's prerogative and said "Do it!" Gideon was soon left standing with a mere three hundred men to face off with thirty thousand. Guess who won the next morning.
Gideon learned that when his trust was placed in the One who gives all life, he could face the greatest of challenges and emerge basking in victory. It mattered not that conventional military strategists of the day would have proclaimed Gideon's downsizing an exercise in suicidal folly. The great prophet Isaiah proclaimed that God's ways are not our ways. We have often heard it said that one plus God equals a majority. This seems to have been real for Gideon when he trusted God.
Jon's furry friends served to remind him and his mother that we can experience genuine freedom and life by trusting in the Source of true strength. Our father above watches over us much the same way Mr. Coon watched over his trusting family. We are told in many scriptures that God is diligent on our behalf. One day we will, as Children of God, be able to frolic in the riches of heaven without fear of what may lurk in the ebony shadows of life.
And, in Heaven, we won't have to eat cat food.
Diplomat
Stranger in your land,
you offered me a hand.
You asked me how it was:
Nothing was in bloom,
winter sky cast its gloom.
Days getting longer,
ancient histories intersecting;
you tell me everything.
Time standing still,
summer warmth draws near;
memory becoming more dear.
Cold wind has lost its chill.
Sanity
I just came back from an international meeting of relief workers where we heard horrors about the many catastrophic humanitarian events occurring each year in the world. It is estimated that some fifty million people are now refugees. The numbers keep rising and one could easily go nuts if the reality of the world's angst was allowed to sink in too far. I just found an antidote to this morbid possibility that's without side effects!
Years ago at a church retreat I came across the concept of passing on warm fuzzies to other people. I have a dear friend who lives three hundred miles away and we conduct much of our friendship via fiber optic cable. I have the luxury of living with a truly fine eight pound warm fuzzy. On occasion I will put the mouthpiece of the phone on my cat's stomach and let her purr for thirty seconds or so; a full minute if I am feeling generous and it's after 11 PM when phone rates are cheap. I can tell at some profound deep level the world is a better place because my cat knows how to purr across a fiber optic network. Maybe I am globalizing, but I know for certain, my friend is better for this great feline ability.
If you started reading from the front, rather than the back as some are inclined to do, then you already know about Rebecca and her seven assorted cats, two parakeets, iridescent green iguana, semi-hairy hamster, and Siamese fighting fish. Yesterday I was accorded the highest level of trust and confidence. Rebecca called me and asked me if I would take care of her various ichthylogical, herpetological, ornithological, and mammalian charges for a whole week while her family went to the beach! I was spell bound with honor.
It was while I was first discharging my important responsibilities to Rebecca's Ark that I had a truly wondrous experience that made all the world's catastrophes fade away, if but for a short time. I had arrived in the gathering darkness to find Priscilla pacing outside, quite hungry and indignant about being separated from her six pack of very thirsty kittens. And yes, they are getting big now at the grand age of seven weeks.
I found lizard food, bird food, fish food, and hamster food and was in route to deliver it in Rebecca’s inner sanctum when Priscilla attached herself firmly to my leg, claws and all, and said “Us first!” You know how new mothers can be. I complied and while Priscilla was porking out along with her playful progeny I fed the rest of the animal kingdom. It was when I came out of Rebecca’s Wild Kingdom that I heard the music of true contentment. Priscilla had finished her Tender Vittles and her fluffy brood had had their fill of Kitten Chow and were lined up like English peas in a pod having mother's milk for dessert. I bent over to partake of this bucolic scene when I heard something I had never ever heard before on my travels in more than thirty countries: a seven-part resonation. Surely, there is nothing in the world like hearing seven contented cats purring at the same time, all wined and dined and bedded down for the night. They were synchronously purrclaiming their happy lot in life.
Perhaps cats can teach us the simplicity of true contentment. In a noisy world a kitten’s purr can speak loudly to our soul.
Cat
For all but one of my years I have had to make do with one parent as my father died when I was less than a year old. My grandparents died far beyond the dim memories of early childhood. Over the years I have often wondered how it would be to lose my mom, then having no parents or grandparents. At 1:34 AM today I received that fateful call that brought my wondering to an end. I was now on my own, or so I had thought.
I have a small gray semi-tabby, with splotches of orange, that has been a great soft spot in my life for some eighteen months now. This cat has some idiosyncrasies that make her quite distinctive. Most notable is her immense joy at being held up side down, on her back in one hand, head down, and scratched hard. She stretches grandly in feline catharsis, and yet, I don’t recall how I learned of this perverse pleasure. From what I do know of many other cats, holding them upside down in such a manner would put one at high risk for being mauled and soundly rebuked.
As much as my cat likes this kind of attention, one of her other strong quirks is an unfaltering dislike of anyone being near her when she is lying down. Sleeping on the bed has simply not been in the cards for her. Her preference for nocturnal repose this time of year is between two pots of impatiens on the patio, hidden behind a large red gloxinia. Last night I was lying down, on my back, talking with my brother about Mom's life. In the grim darkness, the cat jumped up on the bed, climbed on my chest and promptly purrclaimed ‘I have arrived to provide you comfort and company.’ For the remainder of the night that little furry blessing slept with me. Every time I tossed and turned the cat purred quite loudly.
Sometimes God wears a fur coat.
Green Bowl II
I have a good friend who plays viola for a living. Those of you who are professional musician types know that money is often an ethereal concept and not a solid reality. Melanie was experiencing a real shortage of money and was living with another friend of mine to avoid being a client at a homeless shelter. As often happens, friendships are often severely strained by room mate frictions. This was true in this case, even when Melanie and her roomie were the only ones living in three floors of an English Tudor dream. One day, Melanie left a green bowl in the kitchen sink and caught the wrath of God for this misdeed. This actually provoked a major discontinuity between roomies and eventually Melanie found refuge with another musician living in financial uncertainty. In their shared uncertainty, they made a home for some years. For years since we have joked about the "green bowl affair."
Today, I had the second installment of the "green bowl affair." I was praying with my friend, Jan. We were having one of those serious kind of prayers. Her dog, Gabriel, started making much distraction in the kitchen and in proper spiritual fashion, I rebuked him for his canine intrusions into our sacred moments. Jan and I continued. Seconds later Gabriel came into the dining room and noisily deposited his large green plastic bowl between my legs and gave me a look that said "Any time will be fine as long as it is right now." Jan seemed a bit agitated at this second disruption, especially when I stopped to talk with the dog about the theological foundations of faith and prayer.
It occurred to me in that moment that there was a greater lesson in faith in Gabriel's actions than in ours. I suggested to Jan that there was a learning opportunity here for us, between my feet. Gabriel knew that we could and would meet his needs. Why else would this tiny little fluff of a dog bring his giant green bowl to me? It did not occur to him that we would not meet his needs. He knew exactly the source of his needs and how to make them known. That look in his eyes said he was confident in coming before a higher authority for the essentials.
I wondered if we exercise our prayers with the same kind of faith that Gabriel does in disrupting them? Do we really believe in the True Source and do we really make our needs known? Do we ourselves trust in a Higher Authority for the essentials?
Answers to prayer sometimes come on small furry feet.
Housekeeper
You just left my rooms.
Changed the linens.
Cleaned the sink.
Emptied the bin.
Expected.
After all, its your job.
You smiled.
Touched my spirit.
Told me it was meant to be.
Knew what I meant.
After all, its in your heart.
You cleansed my soul.
Intersection
Rouge contrails crossing each other,
I wonder about life's airborne passengers.
In my twilight musings I contemplate.
Do we rendezvous by chance or design?
Hundreds pass within seconds of encounter,
yet perceive nothing beyond tray tables.
In my transcendent state of repose,
vermillion possibilities pierce sapphire reality.
Hundreds of flights, thousands of miles;
yet, I find myself here gazing into your soul.
Knowing the Way, the Pilot ascends.
We are secure in His care and Vision.
Is this seat taken?
Wishbone
Calendar pages peeled past,
holiday holly half-forgotten,
joyous thought comes to light.
Turkey slices long gone,
frozen soup since thawed,
musings meet myriad memories.
Crystalline matrix of winter melts,
drawing attention to Your Sacrifice;
there on the sill, hopeful reminder.
Summoning my beloved to Your altar,
we grasp, pulling, acting in faith,
daring to believe in Impossibility.
My wish? For hers to come true.
Station
Morning dawn stealing night,
shared tears capture first sun.
Embracing, we entreat time to stop;
expanding present instant to eternity.
Releasing you to the care of Another,
my finger tips slip from yours.
Serpentine rails converging,
your carriage fades from view.
I'll feed the cat for you.
Sanctuary
With torrid temperatures tormenting;
summer taunts fresh memory of spring.
Your alabaster portals embrace me,
offering refuge from desolate desert.
Arid heat sublimating to cool shadows,
gentle breezes of inspiration rejuvenate.
Sonic splendor stirring my spirit,
reverent requiems refresh parched soul.
A traveller's thirst transformed,
melodic musings mesmerize my mind.
Setting sun igniting interior radiance;
spectral fragments shatter inner darkness.
You, glowing in His crimson Radiance,
give me resurrected Hope of renewal.
Will there be an encore?
Relief
An elderly man, Amos, once young and strong, was an avid hunter. He liked to hunt deer, turkey in season, and anything else that proved a worthy quarry for an experienced stalker of wild game. He traveled throughout Georgia, North Carolina, and wherever else hunting season was declared open. He lived for it.
One time Amos knew where there was a well-used deer run, a place where deer went down for water from a thirst-quenching river. He went out early one fine morning and found a large strategically located tree, sat down and leaned back against it. Facing the deer run, he waited with anticipation, trigger finger itching for action but restrained by the learned discipline of quiet patience. Like a sentry on duty, he watched for any movement, any evidence of a contest. He waited. Nothing. He waited. Alas, after sitting there a long while, he drifted off to sleep.
Amos was soundly sleeping when he found himself suddenly, instantly on full alert, quite wide wake. Something BIG was breathing down his neck, literally. Amazingly, Amos had the presence of mind to freeze, not even opening his eyes to see what villain had encroached upon him; the price for falling asleep while on duty. From the outside one would have thought Amos still in blissful sleep. Inside, he was in the midst of an adrenalin panic, certain the tables had finally been turned, certain he was going to provide an early morning repast to some forest giant. Amos had heard all those stories about large bears and panthers in these here woods.
Inside his still motionless body, eyes tightly closed, he thought his only chance at salvation was to play dead. Maybe his stalker liked really fresh meat and would think him spoiled. A sniffing inquiring nose went up around his ears, across his face, and around both sides of his neck. Amos could just imagine those vast black nostrils scoping him out, telling that predator's brain that it was going to be a good day after all. Amos could feel those red-hot puffs of moist warm air coming out in two little jets every few seconds. He could envision monstrous TEETH just below those two orifices. He did not like what his imagination showed him. He shuddered.
After what seemed an eternity, perhaps but a few seconds, a tongue began to lick him, collecting even more data. He dared not move. He knew if he moved even a bit, he was a goner. He knew that it had to be a bear or a panther. He still dared not open his eyes. He just sat there, frozen in time and terror. Amos learned to pray to new depths in those moments; that something would happen, that miraculous deliverance would be forthcoming, and real soon. That tongue kept licking him, real rough. He thought, "Its gots to be a bear's tongue, it's too rough to be anything else." It licked his face all over. Time stopped.
After what seemed like the passage of a geologic epoch, Amos got a new piece of auditory data. After all, they say the last thing to go is your hearing. Amos heard his deliverance. The would-be predator whined. Yeah, just one of those ordinary plaintive whines that dogs make when a beloved master is not paying enough attention to their psychological needs. In the vastness of one second, Amos came to know this beast was not a bear, not a panther, not a cruel stalker. He opened his eyes. The truth was before him: an attentive old hound dog, probably one that had gotten separated from his master while he was hunting in these same woods.
With immense gratitude Amos wrapped his arms around this unsuspecting mutt and wept. He thought this the best sounding and best looking dog he had ever seen in his life. He just hugged him and hugged him. Waves of blessed relief swept through Amos. His prayers had been answered. The dog looked at him quizzically as if to say "What's the big deal?" Eventually Amos led him out of the trees and went home. Seems Amos lost his appetite for deer that morning.
There is at least one deceased hound in the woods of northeast Georgia that must have wondered about humans a bit more than usual. I say departed, as this pooch would be no less than seventy-five years old if still living. Hound dogs are different than your standard suburban labrador retrievers that spend most of their lives on hearths or romping on carefully-tended Bermuda turf while being patted on the head by happy toddlers. Stray dogs surviving in forests are not used to a lot of affection from humans, and especially from guys banging around in the underbrush with shotguns during the height of hunting season. One unnamed woof sure got a fine surprise one day when he caught a fellow sleeping on the job.
Beauty really is in the eyes of the beholder
Saturday, February 9, 2008
When You Itch For Something to Eat
They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. My life experience suggests a whole lot of people believe this to be true. Eating is certainly one of life's great pleasures, much to the profit-driven delight of the myriad franchises offering miracle diet plans.
I was having a holiday open house and several guests brought some of their culinary treasures. One chronologically gifted (elderly) woman had for several years struggled with rapidly failing health, quite unable to stand or walk. Yet, she brought a small warm loaf of fruit bread of her own making. Its sweet fragrance reminded me of the simple things in life that really satisfy. Reading "Bread" might make you itch for a warm piece of your own.
Most people eat grapefruit by cutting it in half and then eating out the sections with a serrated spoon or by first using a knife to free the sections. The real nature of the fruit is incised from their experience. If you want a fuller, more visual experience while eating a grapefruit, get a large pink Ruby Red, peel it slowly and have nothing else requiring your immediate attention. I was lucky enough to have a perfect Ruby Red given to me by a dear friend. Grapefruits received as gifts are always better than ones purchased. "Pink Grapefruit" may just change your view of this splendid sub-tropical offering.
One of the most elegant aspects of train travel is the dining car with its crisply starched linen table cloths, fresh cut flowers in a crystal vase, and a steward in black tails. I have the great fortune to live in a small town that is near one of the few remaining rail lines in America. I also have the greater benefit of being able to take daily service on the Crescent which offers full dining car service.
There is no better way to break up a long journey into bite-size pieces than to take leisurely multi-course meals in the dining car at sunrise and sunset. "Dining Car" describes my pleasant musings during an evening meal shortly after I had parted company with my Beloved. Love is good food for the soul.
Bread
Gently combining nature's magic,
you add your loving essence.
Singing melodies of contentment,
you append joy to secret formulas.
Solar warmth of ancient forest
bursts forth from hibernation.
Rising to the antediluvian sun,
your creation takes on golden hue.
Driving away pungency of winter,
warm fragrant aromas enchant.
Basking in spectral fantasy of Christmas,
we delight in scrumptious expectation.
Can I have cold milk with it?
Dining Car
Sunset slipping silently into memory,
I feast alone,
mesmerized by your radiant Presence.
The seat opposite looms vacant.
Yet,
my soul rejoices with grand fullness.
Snow white linen recalls good fortune.
Remembering,
I bask in rich purity of your Love.
Crimson carnations colorize reflections.
Illuminating,
remembrance of your warmth fires imagination.
Careening into dense darkness,
trusting,
Your luminous spirit disperses shadow.
Serpentine steel takes me afar.
Yet,
to You shall my heart return.
Might I have dessert?
Pink Grapefruit
Today I had Yours for breakfast;
giving me musings of miraculous marvels.
Peeling back saffron leatherette,
I found Heaven's tears in perfect pouches.
Florida sunlight cached in rose teardrops,
translucent pendants of rouge glistened.
Succulent sweet sections giving sustenance,
I sat mute, astounded by Your Love for me.
Would you like a piece?
I was having a holiday open house and several guests brought some of their culinary treasures. One chronologically gifted (elderly) woman had for several years struggled with rapidly failing health, quite unable to stand or walk. Yet, she brought a small warm loaf of fruit bread of her own making. Its sweet fragrance reminded me of the simple things in life that really satisfy. Reading "Bread" might make you itch for a warm piece of your own.
Most people eat grapefruit by cutting it in half and then eating out the sections with a serrated spoon or by first using a knife to free the sections. The real nature of the fruit is incised from their experience. If you want a fuller, more visual experience while eating a grapefruit, get a large pink Ruby Red, peel it slowly and have nothing else requiring your immediate attention. I was lucky enough to have a perfect Ruby Red given to me by a dear friend. Grapefruits received as gifts are always better than ones purchased. "Pink Grapefruit" may just change your view of this splendid sub-tropical offering.
One of the most elegant aspects of train travel is the dining car with its crisply starched linen table cloths, fresh cut flowers in a crystal vase, and a steward in black tails. I have the great fortune to live in a small town that is near one of the few remaining rail lines in America. I also have the greater benefit of being able to take daily service on the Crescent which offers full dining car service.
There is no better way to break up a long journey into bite-size pieces than to take leisurely multi-course meals in the dining car at sunrise and sunset. "Dining Car" describes my pleasant musings during an evening meal shortly after I had parted company with my Beloved. Love is good food for the soul.
Bread
Gently combining nature's magic,
you add your loving essence.
Singing melodies of contentment,
you append joy to secret formulas.
Solar warmth of ancient forest
bursts forth from hibernation.
Rising to the antediluvian sun,
your creation takes on golden hue.
Driving away pungency of winter,
warm fragrant aromas enchant.
Basking in spectral fantasy of Christmas,
we delight in scrumptious expectation.
Can I have cold milk with it?
Dining Car
Sunset slipping silently into memory,
I feast alone,
mesmerized by your radiant Presence.
The seat opposite looms vacant.
Yet,
my soul rejoices with grand fullness.
Snow white linen recalls good fortune.
Remembering,
I bask in rich purity of your Love.
Crimson carnations colorize reflections.
Illuminating,
remembrance of your warmth fires imagination.
Careening into dense darkness,
trusting,
Your luminous spirit disperses shadow.
Serpentine steel takes me afar.
Yet,
to You shall my heart return.
Might I have dessert?
Pink Grapefruit
Today I had Yours for breakfast;
giving me musings of miraculous marvels.
Peeling back saffron leatherette,
I found Heaven's tears in perfect pouches.
Florida sunlight cached in rose teardrops,
translucent pendants of rouge glistened.
Succulent sweet sections giving sustenance,
I sat mute, astounded by Your Love for me.
Would you like a piece?
When You Itch For A Transcendant Experience
There are those moments in life where we feel like we can fly, like we can do anything. I often wonder if there is anything we can do to make these transcendent experiences occur more frequently. I often itch to encounter these. Sometimes they happen in the clouds, sometimes in a windowless room.
There have been those times when I have looked at the stars from eight or nine miles above the South Pacific or five miles above the Himalayan mountains and had a nearly visionary experience of the universe. Anything seems possible. In "Climb Out" it occurs to me that the life of Faith can be much like the ascent in a space shuttle; the ride of a life time.
Often we believe we know what is best for us. My cat is no different. "Behind Closed Doors" provides the object lesson that as I know what is best for my cat, so does God know what is best for me. A closed door may prove to be a great blessing rather than a sign of denial or deprivation. Ask my cat when she comes back in.
Sometimes we walk through a portal into another world. Taking a ski lift above a mountain town at night, we looked down in wonderment at eight million Christmas lights hung by man. On the alpine summit we looked up in wonderment at the countless stellar lights hung by the Creator. "Night Lift" describes our ascent.
In our part of the world, summer brings violent afternoon thunderstorms. Sometimes these split the night open in arcs of lavender power. With the lightning and thunder comes the rain that waters next falls' harvest. Following this comes the still coolness. Such is the case with the severe turbulence that comes in life circumstances. "Updraft" says we can rise above cancer, unemployment, divorce, betrayal, and heart disease.
"Visionary" proves that we can rise above the worst storms of life. While attending a scientific conference in British Columbia, a lecturer demonstrated that he could rise above the trauma of losing his eye sight. Sometimes tribulation will scratch the itch we have for a transcendent experience.
We live in an era where credentials and certifications are over emphasized. Jesus never had any kind of credentials. When my mother died last year I learned first hand that some of the best teachers are not papered. "A Theology According To Puderd" makes the humorous suggestion that some of the world's best teachers are very short in stature but tall in wisdom.
A fellow doing some computer programming for me a quadriplegic confined to a pneumatic wheel chair for more than thirty years after having been paralyzed from the chin down in an auto accident. He is absolutely dependent on others. While visiting with Ron recently, we found ourselves musing about the paths we have each taken through life. Ron observed that I had a life that would easily be in the top one percent because of my opportunity to travel the world, study in six American universities, work in four different careers, even live in a castle in Europe. Ron went on quickly to tell me that his life represented the bottom one percent because of his vast unrelenting suffering and dependency. In "Orbiter" we found that in the eternal scheme of things, we were on an equal footing. Ron will transcend his paralysis.
As a hospice volunteer I hear some heart-rending stories. At other times I hear stories that inspire one to great faith in the human spirit. Altruism is one of the most inspiring aspects of humanity. Such was the case recently when I heard two tales from our volunteer coordinator. "Last Dance" chronicles the ability of a young child to empower a terminally ill wheel-chair bound octogenarian to rise above her limitations and to dance. "Tee Off" captures the dream of a dying golfer to once more travel the links before going to that last hole which marks the end of life.
Climb Out
Sonic blast exploding into silence,
Mach I stillness sets my soul soaring.
Piercing the alto-cumulus ceiling,
Mach II elation yields cosmic clarity.
Fierce fire fueling freedom's flight,
Mach III exhilaration is transcendent.
Jettisoning burdens of conformity,
Mach IV offers iridescent wisps in Cygnus.
Breaking free of fear's gravity,
I exalt in unfettered flights of Faith.
Abandoning illusion of self-made certainty,
galaxies of possibilities shimmer ahead.
Only for now, do we see through a glass darkly.
Behind Closed Doors
There is a rather large regal male Himalayan cat that has been hanging around my house for many months. This huge feline is clearly used to getting his way with the female kitties of the neighborhood. My neighbor's hapless female tabby just delivered a third six-pack of kittens fathered by this rogue. This is important to me because I myself have a small declawed gray with semi-orange tabby which loudly insists on being let outside for short roamings. Fortunately, a surgical intervention will prevent my becoming grandfather to a young troupe of rambunctious Himalayan/tabby hybrids.
My innocent little know-it-all pet will stand at the back door and inundate me with a rather carefully contrived and irritating yowl until I relent and let her out. She knows what's good for her. I don't, she's certain. Be that as it may, I let her out against my better judgement, realizing that the only way for her to understand my reluctance to let her out, is to let her out. If the grand stalker is out there, the lesson is learned quickly and kitty is back in the house before I can even think about closing the door. At other times learning is slower to come.
Some time it takes ten minutes or more. The problem is that in ten minutes I may have forgotten that Puderd is outside and not hear her proclamations of a lesson well-studied. This has on occasion made for some very long and cold contemplation as she spent the whole of the night outside. I may find myself wondering why the cat has not hopped up on the bed during the night, but I don't get up to hunt for her. When I go to stand in the bathroom first thing in the morning, after one of those nights, doing my business, looking out the window, wanna guess who is precariously perched on the second-floor sill, greeting me with a plaintive heart-rending bid for safety, inner warmth, fresh Purina pellets, and a soft bed? One of the unexplained mysteries of my universe is how that cat can possibly know I am in that bathroom (there are three) at that precise time. You must understand I don't use the bathrooms in a predictable fashion.
An important spiritual principle occurred to me as I let her in the house yesterday after a wandering in the outer darkness, compounded by one of those surprise freezes that aren't supposed to occur because the calendar says it well into springtime. God knows best. We humans like to think we know what is best for us. We are quite willing to enter into protracted entreaties with God in Heaven to grant us our secret desires. We believe there is something better on the other side of the closed door. Sometimes there is. Today there was a clear warm spring day on the other side with no feline monsters lurking in the bushes. Yesterday there was darkness beyond AND that Minotaur was out there. I knew this, but Puderd didn't want to trust my judgement on this. It almost got her badly hurt. We often don't want to trust God to know what is on the other side of our doors. We yank knobs. Some times we get torn up, very badly at that. Sometimes we even die.
We often like to say that God does not close a door without opening a window. Sometimes God doesn't open the door in the first place. We may ignore the fact it's closed and rip it open only to find an abyss on the other side. Our own momentum may well carry us out into the void. If we are fortunate, we may grab onto the safety chain and avoid freefall. That door may well have been closed for our protection.
Each of us has been created unique with a constellation of life experiences, strengths and weaknesses. What is an abyss for one may be for another an opportunity to test new wings. What for another may be a horror of darkness may be for me an opportunity to see diamonds of possibility glittering in a night sky.
Large-scale polls show that the number one fear in the United States is to speak before a group of people. People would rather die than be compelled to do this. For me, what others fear even more than death, is a pleasure of the highest order. Today, I spoke before groups twice, relishing every moment, wishing I had a multitude more of them. I could happily stand in a stadium before ten thousand.
Every time I get on an airplane, which I have done hundreds of times, I am amazed that most of the people around me quite blithely pop out a novel, the Wall Street Journal, or a lap-top computer and carry on with the ordinary doings of life. Me? I'm too busy leaving my fingerprints in the steel of the armrest to be bothered with something as trivial as reading or pounding on my computer. I don't do well flying, especially in TURBULENCE! I think about nothing except the delicious prospect of that small bounce that comes when the wheels touch down on my beloved terra firma once again.
After going her own way for a season, my cat comes to realize I had a better plan for her. Her animated scamper and gleeful gurgle as she rushes back into my safety tells me she has accomplished some learning. I had offered her security, food, repose. She chose darkness, want, and fear. Alas, the next day she forgets. But, so do we.
Only God knows the future and only God is able know what is really best for us. Surely if I can see to the best interests of my house pet, then we can trust God to bring the right mix of experiences and challenges to enrich our lives and to grow us past our fears. We can believe He has nothing but our ultimate welfare in mind. After all, we were bought with a Great Price. The promise of the Christian message is that God will withhold no good thing from us. At the same time, He doesn't promise us freedom from turbulence. Yet, we can often seek out the safety of smooth air by following His precepts, including honoring closed doors. And, He will see His chosen through to a safe landing in Heaven.
When God let's us out, He also remembers to let us back in.
Night Lift
Leaving behind warmth of hearth,
we board Heaven’s chariot.
Shimmering with tension,
stainless strand catapults us forward.
Electric galaxies glimmering below,
hushed reverence silences pilgrims.
Ascending to winter’s summit,
we transcend ourselves, awed.
City lights forgotten,
cosmic fires twinkle in frigid voids.
Soaring in that High Place,
we worship with wonderment.
He is known through that which is created.
Updraft
Spring sublimating into summer,
cherry blossoms wilt into memory.
Tempestuous towers of cumulus rise,
incited by solar infernos of August.
Struggling, losing lift in fiery heat,
fear fuels frantic flapping of wings.
Perilous perturbations of life overloading,
adamantine landing looms far below.
In translucent shadow of tempest,
rain refreshes my parched spirit.
Cloud, offering respite from torrid trial;
trepidation transmutes to tranquillity.
Convection currents ascending unseen,
life’s maelstrom elevates my perspective.
In barren deserts of thirsty souls,
cloudbursts detonate flowering miracles.
Rainbows appear after storms.
Visionary
I wandered into your lecture hall today, expectant of an opportunity to learn facts. The program announced you would tell me something about scientific mysteries. Instead you taught me of the greater mystery of the grand capacity of the human spirit to overcome challenge. You demonstrated one is capable of excellence, in spite of the greatest of hardships and loss.
For a number of minutes I sat as you delivered a flawless presentation with a perfect slide series. Looking about the room you keep the audience with you, not missing a point in your presentation, not once looking at your slides for prompts, not once looking to your notes for cues. This would have been a most impressive program for any of us. For you it was truly astounding.
Only after you told us, did we realize you are totally blind. The most important things I learned today in your lecture had nothing to with science or computing technology, it had to do with seeing the possibilities for personal growth; to seeing the opportunities from standing up to the challenge of losing one's sight. You, who have no eyes, have taught me how to see things that really matter.
A Theology According to Puderd
If we are really honest, we have to all confess to having some really absurd silly terms of endearment for our little furry friends and, horror of horrors, our not‑so‑furry friends, lovers, and soul mates. We would probably be mortified if others ever heard us use these terms in the light of day. Time for a true confession I have a small smoke‑gray cat that lets me live with her. Somehow the name she had when given to me, Frisky, has been transmuted to Puderd. Don't ask how. I guess it's the same process that transmutes Jan to Fuzzums. Life seems to have its little mysteries.
The important things here are the ecclesiastical merits of this fuzzy spokesfeline for a Higher One. I have attended bible school in Europe and have a letters in theology in one of the Hammermill photocopy paper boxes in my basement. Yet I have gained some deep insights from my small fur‑coated teacher I never learned from the scholarly men of the United Kingdom.
I have a small room in my house in which I keep an antique book cabinet filled with ancient books from prior centuries. I also have an oak table in there on which I have a large plaster Celtic Cross, back lit with a single orange light bulb in one of those little candlestick things you normally see in windows at Christmas, with clear lights in them. An olive‑wood clad New Testament I got in Jerusalem and the Episcopal Book of common Prayer are there also. There's a nine foot miniature‑leaf schiffelera filling up the remainder of the room.
With my mother having died this week I find I am going into this room a lot more than I normally do. It seems like a good place to wonder about stuff like the meaning of life, death, illness, dreams, God, the order of the universe. I just discovered last night it to be an exquisite place of learning about the peace of God. It was very late in the evening and I was sitting there on floor, legs crossed, facing Jan (Fuzzums), who was as I. We were having a time of prayer since the angst of the world and issues of mortality seemed much too close for comfort. In the midst of this other‑worldly time, a very short‑statured teacher came quietly into our midst, padding so silently in fur‑lined slippers.
This confident tutor, arranging herself in my legs, gave me a look as if to say "I have an important quiet lesson for you to learn, Watch." I didn't know that cat's legs could go in all these directions at once. This cat managed to assume a position of repose with all four feet somehow intertwined and at the same time pointing to Heaven. This spoke ever‑loudly to me, in the silence, of great trust and confidence. This little mentor went quite happily to sleep with a loud purr, proclaiming the peace of God.
The aura of peace, contentment, and serenity that surrounded this small teacher radiated out in ever‑widening circles. I had a vision of those ever‑widening circles moving out beyond the dim orange light of this sanctuary to enfold an entire troubled world. I even asked out loud if God was making himself known to me through my cat. The ancient writings of Faith tell us God spoke through the mouth of a donkey. Perhaps he speaks through cats in the atomic age. I still feel like whispering and tip‑toeing.
They didn't tell me in Sunday School that God can purr.
Orbiter
If you have had the rare and singularly spectacular experience of orbiting the earth in a space craft, you will quickly agree there is almost no experience that compares to it. Seeing the corona of the rising sun as one careens along at seventeen thousand miles an hour is inspiring beyond imagination. In mere moments, one is blasted from inky cosmic darkness into blinding solar brilliance. Black shadows transform into magnificent swirls of cerulean and platinum as morning spreads across Heaven.
A most tantalizing aspect of orbiting earth is the apparent horizontal flatness of land surfaces. One can look down through a porthole at vast mountain ranges and only distinguish them by virtue of small tufts of white on their peaks and hints of shadow cast by them early and late in the day.
If I am down on earth climbing mountains, I have an acute awareness of variations in elevation and inclinations. "Verticalness" can be a dizzying, overwhelming experience when roped to the side of a ten-thousand foot wall of granite for three weeks. One longs for, almost craves, anything horizontal. A ten-inch ledge can seem like a king-size bed. Yet, from three hundred miles up the overpowering "verticalness" is completely lost in a transcendent view of the world. Nothing has changed in the mountains, only my perspective has been altered.
I have a fellow working for me who has been confined to an air-driven wheel chair for thirty-one years after having been paralyzed from the chin down in an auto accident. He is quite unable to attend to any of his personal needs whatever. He is absolutely one hundred percent dependent on others.
I was visiting with Ron recently when we found ourselves musing about the paths we have each taken through life. Ron made the observation that I have had a life that would easily be in the top one percent of lives live because of my opportunity to travel the world, study in six American universities, work in four different careers, live in a castle in Europe, make good on many of my dreams. I have known but little suffering. Ron went on quickly to tell me that his life represented the bottom one percent of lives because of his vast unrelenting suffering and dependency. There was no argument from me. I assured him he was absolutely correct on both points.
At that moment it occurred to me that we both had taken radically different paths to get to the same place. We were both sitting in the same room, looking at the same computer screen, wanting to do the same thing and we were both drinking from the same bottle of soda, even if I had to hold the bottle and give him his through a straw.
I said "Ron, what matters now is that we share the most important thing in common, a saving faith in the Son of God. One day you and I will both be very far from here. For unnumbered tomorrows we will walk in the New Jerusalem. You will have forgotten that you ever lived in a wheel chair or that you couldn't even wipe away your own tears, which you've had plenty of. You will be too busy dashing about, exploring the place He has prepared for you. I will have forgotten that I was able to study in six universities and travel by jet plane all over the world. I will be too busy learning the real answers to the questions that matter most. Hardly will it matter that I had a fine home and more than enough money in the bank. I will be walking on those streets of transparent gold, trying to find you."
Heaven will be like an orbiting space shuttle in some respects. From that vantage we will no longer find ourselves in dark shadows between mountain peaks. From the great height of Heaven it is unlikely we will even be able to see the shadows below. We will simply find ourselves in eternal brilliance that never ceases.
But for a season of darkness do we see dimly for one day the Son will rise above the horizon of Heaven.
Last Dance
Children are often our greatest teachers. For one thing, they are much less conscious of human limitations and think most anything is possible. Such was the case of a small nameless little girl in a restaurant who empowered a terminally- ill wheel-chair bound octogenarian to rise above her limitations, to have a child-like faith that all things are, indeed, possible.
Recently, five of our Hospice patients were given an opportunity to maximize the pleasures of a balmy spring day. We all knew this would be the last spring for these dear souls. A church van was pressed into service and five youth group members volunteered to help make a memorable last outing possible for these patients.
The patients were loaded with their nurses, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and other medical paraphernalia into this chariot and taken on an expedition to a nearby mall where they could forget about the hard work of dying for a short while. And chances are the squealing happy voices of kids still resounded in that van from prior expeditions and added to the merciful forgetfulness of these patients' present difficult circumstances.
I remember how it was as a child to be confined in a hospital bed for weeks with a severe case of mononucleosis. I recall my utter entrancement with the ordinary world outside of my sickroom on that delicious day when I was released from the hospital. My hospital bed and its torments were soon forgotten. For our Hospice patients, darkened rooms and hushed uncertain voices were left behind and exchanged for a vast, bright, colorful world of fountains, trees, chattering families, delicious aromas, and endless possibility in that mall.
This world included the fine tasty southern vittles of Aunt Sue's restaurant. If you have ever been through a spell of hospital food, then you know how important this is. After a grand luncheon the patients wanted to listen to an organist playing dance music out on the patio and eat two large scoops of rich ice cream without a thought to the cholesterol count or fat grams. And so they did.
One of these fragile life-loving patients, Catherine, was wheel-chair bound, on continuous oxygen therapy, and a dancer. Once a soul has experienced dance, it is never content with the sidelines and is forever a dancer. Yet, her body had long since betrayed her and it had been years since she was whisked about a ballroom floor in a shimmering gown.
She knew it was now or never. It was time for the last dance. She asked our volunteer coordinator, Charlene, if she could dance with her. Charlene pondered how one gets a fragile terminally- ill patient out of a wheel chair, up on her feet and then dancing without stumbling over her oxygen tubing. Catherine somehow was able to cling to Charlene and they danced just a bit, right there, submitting to the limitations of her oxygen tubing. She then sat down exhausted, in her wheelchair.
Charlene is a very outgoing, social soul and was visiting about the patio with the other patients and staff following this small miracle. A greater one was soon to follow.
After some minutes Charlene looked up to see Ms Catherine had taken off her oxygen, arisen from her wheelchair, and was now dancing in the middle of the floor with a small angel of a child. This child had not yet been taught about the limitations of terminal disease or oxygen tubes. They danced round and round that floor. Catherine returned and sat down in her wheelchair, put her oxygen back on, and smiled. She died but a few days later, having danced to the end.
This child-angel had helped this departing soul to fulfill a last dream. Perhaps this child also knew that Catherine would be dancing when she experienced the magic of Heaven and would have wanted to freshen up on her dancing just a bit before arriving.
The Christian scriptures tell us that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Perhaps that child had whispered in Catherine's ear and told her this was really true. She believed it and transcended her own weaknesses.
This dear patient's nurse was present on that dance floor and was simply astounded that Catherine could possibly get up out of her chair, let alone dance, and do this without oxygen. Catherine later said that was the best day she had in many years.
Yes, all things are possible for those who believe.
Tee-Off
An octogenarian golfer, Mr. Carter, could only walk the emerald links in his memories when he was admitted to our Hospice program as a patient. An inoperable cerebral aneurysm had stolen most of his sight and would soon steal all of his life. Before this dark thief stole in on him, he walked and played at least thirty-six holes of golf everyday. He lived for golf.
This swinger of yesteryear had a birthday soon after his becoming a Hospice patient and our volunteer staff was in a quandary as to what they might do to help him celebrate his birthday in proper fashion. One of the truly splendid things about Hospice is the recognition of important days for patients by staff and volunteers; anniversaries, birthdays, holidays. Hospice workers know too well these days probably won't occur but once again for the patients.
The staff decided to surprise Mr. Carter with a luncheon at a restaurant of his choice. What they didn't tell him was the nature of dessert, a visit to the Picken's Country Club where it had been arranged with the golf pro for a tour of the course in a cart with detailed explanation of the course by an experienced golfer.
Following a fine birthday lunch, Mr. Carter, his nurse, social worker, home-health aide, and the volunteer coordinator went for what proved a magical Tru-Flite experience. While an experienced golfer talked him through the course, telling him the distances on the fairways and the lay of the greens, Mr. Carter offered his suggestions on club use; a seven iron or a pitching wedge, or putter. In his mind, he might as well have been at the Masters in Augusta with full galleries cheering him on.
At the club house following, Mr. Carter was given the opportunity to show he was still in swing with life. The staff that had accompanied him to the country club maneuvered him to a putting green, guided his hand to the cup and let him step back his paces from there to challenge the others to a putting contest. He was virtually blind to this world but in his dreams he could still see. He actually went on to win that small putting contest with the Hospice staff.
That putting contest never made it to the annals of the PGA but it did make it to annals of Heaven, where, no doubt, Mr. Carter has bragged about it often, but not as much as he did his final exploit on the golf course.
About this time Hospice was arranging a fund-raising benefit tournament and it was suggested that if Mr. Carter were still alive when the tournament took place, he should be the one to hit the first ball of the contest. When he was told of this plan, one might have thought he had been told he was going to live anew as a successor to Arnold Palmer or one of the other golf greats. He was excited. Every time a nurse or health worker went out to his house, they were quizzed on the status of the tournament. Was it still going to happen? Would it be soon enough?
Just before the great event it was announced that a special guest, Mr. Carter would be hitting the first ball to open the tournament. By this time he was essentially blind and had to be led to the T. A ball was placed for him. He was put in position, told where the ball was, given a club, and allowed to follow his dream. He hit the ball, as if laser guided, more than one hundred and fifty yards, perhaps one hundred seventy-five yards down the center of that fairway.
'Did I hit it?' he asked. 'Where'd it go?' The other contestants erupted in applause. For him, Augusta had arrived in time. He stayed the whole tournament to see who would win. We already knew who the real winner was. The others just raised money. Mr. Carter raised our awareness of how real dreamers can do just about anything.
For the remaining days of his life, Mr. Carter could speak of no other thing than the magic of that Tru-Flite ball going down the exact center of that fairway.
"Call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things which thou knowest not."
There have been those times when I have looked at the stars from eight or nine miles above the South Pacific or five miles above the Himalayan mountains and had a nearly visionary experience of the universe. Anything seems possible. In "Climb Out" it occurs to me that the life of Faith can be much like the ascent in a space shuttle; the ride of a life time.
Often we believe we know what is best for us. My cat is no different. "Behind Closed Doors" provides the object lesson that as I know what is best for my cat, so does God know what is best for me. A closed door may prove to be a great blessing rather than a sign of denial or deprivation. Ask my cat when she comes back in.
Sometimes we walk through a portal into another world. Taking a ski lift above a mountain town at night, we looked down in wonderment at eight million Christmas lights hung by man. On the alpine summit we looked up in wonderment at the countless stellar lights hung by the Creator. "Night Lift" describes our ascent.
In our part of the world, summer brings violent afternoon thunderstorms. Sometimes these split the night open in arcs of lavender power. With the lightning and thunder comes the rain that waters next falls' harvest. Following this comes the still coolness. Such is the case with the severe turbulence that comes in life circumstances. "Updraft" says we can rise above cancer, unemployment, divorce, betrayal, and heart disease.
"Visionary" proves that we can rise above the worst storms of life. While attending a scientific conference in British Columbia, a lecturer demonstrated that he could rise above the trauma of losing his eye sight. Sometimes tribulation will scratch the itch we have for a transcendent experience.
We live in an era where credentials and certifications are over emphasized. Jesus never had any kind of credentials. When my mother died last year I learned first hand that some of the best teachers are not papered. "A Theology According To Puderd" makes the humorous suggestion that some of the world's best teachers are very short in stature but tall in wisdom.
A fellow doing some computer programming for me a quadriplegic confined to a pneumatic wheel chair for more than thirty years after having been paralyzed from the chin down in an auto accident. He is absolutely dependent on others. While visiting with Ron recently, we found ourselves musing about the paths we have each taken through life. Ron observed that I had a life that would easily be in the top one percent because of my opportunity to travel the world, study in six American universities, work in four different careers, even live in a castle in Europe. Ron went on quickly to tell me that his life represented the bottom one percent because of his vast unrelenting suffering and dependency. In "Orbiter" we found that in the eternal scheme of things, we were on an equal footing. Ron will transcend his paralysis.
As a hospice volunteer I hear some heart-rending stories. At other times I hear stories that inspire one to great faith in the human spirit. Altruism is one of the most inspiring aspects of humanity. Such was the case recently when I heard two tales from our volunteer coordinator. "Last Dance" chronicles the ability of a young child to empower a terminally ill wheel-chair bound octogenarian to rise above her limitations and to dance. "Tee Off" captures the dream of a dying golfer to once more travel the links before going to that last hole which marks the end of life.
Climb Out
Sonic blast exploding into silence,
Mach I stillness sets my soul soaring.
Piercing the alto-cumulus ceiling,
Mach II elation yields cosmic clarity.
Fierce fire fueling freedom's flight,
Mach III exhilaration is transcendent.
Jettisoning burdens of conformity,
Mach IV offers iridescent wisps in Cygnus.
Breaking free of fear's gravity,
I exalt in unfettered flights of Faith.
Abandoning illusion of self-made certainty,
galaxies of possibilities shimmer ahead.
Only for now, do we see through a glass darkly.
Behind Closed Doors
There is a rather large regal male Himalayan cat that has been hanging around my house for many months. This huge feline is clearly used to getting his way with the female kitties of the neighborhood. My neighbor's hapless female tabby just delivered a third six-pack of kittens fathered by this rogue. This is important to me because I myself have a small declawed gray with semi-orange tabby which loudly insists on being let outside for short roamings. Fortunately, a surgical intervention will prevent my becoming grandfather to a young troupe of rambunctious Himalayan/tabby hybrids.
My innocent little know-it-all pet will stand at the back door and inundate me with a rather carefully contrived and irritating yowl until I relent and let her out. She knows what's good for her. I don't, she's certain. Be that as it may, I let her out against my better judgement, realizing that the only way for her to understand my reluctance to let her out, is to let her out. If the grand stalker is out there, the lesson is learned quickly and kitty is back in the house before I can even think about closing the door. At other times learning is slower to come.
Some time it takes ten minutes or more. The problem is that in ten minutes I may have forgotten that Puderd is outside and not hear her proclamations of a lesson well-studied. This has on occasion made for some very long and cold contemplation as she spent the whole of the night outside. I may find myself wondering why the cat has not hopped up on the bed during the night, but I don't get up to hunt for her. When I go to stand in the bathroom first thing in the morning, after one of those nights, doing my business, looking out the window, wanna guess who is precariously perched on the second-floor sill, greeting me with a plaintive heart-rending bid for safety, inner warmth, fresh Purina pellets, and a soft bed? One of the unexplained mysteries of my universe is how that cat can possibly know I am in that bathroom (there are three) at that precise time. You must understand I don't use the bathrooms in a predictable fashion.
An important spiritual principle occurred to me as I let her in the house yesterday after a wandering in the outer darkness, compounded by one of those surprise freezes that aren't supposed to occur because the calendar says it well into springtime. God knows best. We humans like to think we know what is best for us. We are quite willing to enter into protracted entreaties with God in Heaven to grant us our secret desires. We believe there is something better on the other side of the closed door. Sometimes there is. Today there was a clear warm spring day on the other side with no feline monsters lurking in the bushes. Yesterday there was darkness beyond AND that Minotaur was out there. I knew this, but Puderd didn't want to trust my judgement on this. It almost got her badly hurt. We often don't want to trust God to know what is on the other side of our doors. We yank knobs. Some times we get torn up, very badly at that. Sometimes we even die.
We often like to say that God does not close a door without opening a window. Sometimes God doesn't open the door in the first place. We may ignore the fact it's closed and rip it open only to find an abyss on the other side. Our own momentum may well carry us out into the void. If we are fortunate, we may grab onto the safety chain and avoid freefall. That door may well have been closed for our protection.
Each of us has been created unique with a constellation of life experiences, strengths and weaknesses. What is an abyss for one may be for another an opportunity to test new wings. What for another may be a horror of darkness may be for me an opportunity to see diamonds of possibility glittering in a night sky.
Large-scale polls show that the number one fear in the United States is to speak before a group of people. People would rather die than be compelled to do this. For me, what others fear even more than death, is a pleasure of the highest order. Today, I spoke before groups twice, relishing every moment, wishing I had a multitude more of them. I could happily stand in a stadium before ten thousand.
Every time I get on an airplane, which I have done hundreds of times, I am amazed that most of the people around me quite blithely pop out a novel, the Wall Street Journal, or a lap-top computer and carry on with the ordinary doings of life. Me? I'm too busy leaving my fingerprints in the steel of the armrest to be bothered with something as trivial as reading or pounding on my computer. I don't do well flying, especially in TURBULENCE! I think about nothing except the delicious prospect of that small bounce that comes when the wheels touch down on my beloved terra firma once again.
After going her own way for a season, my cat comes to realize I had a better plan for her. Her animated scamper and gleeful gurgle as she rushes back into my safety tells me she has accomplished some learning. I had offered her security, food, repose. She chose darkness, want, and fear. Alas, the next day she forgets. But, so do we.
Only God knows the future and only God is able know what is really best for us. Surely if I can see to the best interests of my house pet, then we can trust God to bring the right mix of experiences and challenges to enrich our lives and to grow us past our fears. We can believe He has nothing but our ultimate welfare in mind. After all, we were bought with a Great Price. The promise of the Christian message is that God will withhold no good thing from us. At the same time, He doesn't promise us freedom from turbulence. Yet, we can often seek out the safety of smooth air by following His precepts, including honoring closed doors. And, He will see His chosen through to a safe landing in Heaven.
When God let's us out, He also remembers to let us back in.
Night Lift
Leaving behind warmth of hearth,
we board Heaven’s chariot.
Shimmering with tension,
stainless strand catapults us forward.
Electric galaxies glimmering below,
hushed reverence silences pilgrims.
Ascending to winter’s summit,
we transcend ourselves, awed.
City lights forgotten,
cosmic fires twinkle in frigid voids.
Soaring in that High Place,
we worship with wonderment.
He is known through that which is created.
Updraft
Spring sublimating into summer,
cherry blossoms wilt into memory.
Tempestuous towers of cumulus rise,
incited by solar infernos of August.
Struggling, losing lift in fiery heat,
fear fuels frantic flapping of wings.
Perilous perturbations of life overloading,
adamantine landing looms far below.
In translucent shadow of tempest,
rain refreshes my parched spirit.
Cloud, offering respite from torrid trial;
trepidation transmutes to tranquillity.
Convection currents ascending unseen,
life’s maelstrom elevates my perspective.
In barren deserts of thirsty souls,
cloudbursts detonate flowering miracles.
Rainbows appear after storms.
Visionary
I wandered into your lecture hall today, expectant of an opportunity to learn facts. The program announced you would tell me something about scientific mysteries. Instead you taught me of the greater mystery of the grand capacity of the human spirit to overcome challenge. You demonstrated one is capable of excellence, in spite of the greatest of hardships and loss.
For a number of minutes I sat as you delivered a flawless presentation with a perfect slide series. Looking about the room you keep the audience with you, not missing a point in your presentation, not once looking at your slides for prompts, not once looking to your notes for cues. This would have been a most impressive program for any of us. For you it was truly astounding.
Only after you told us, did we realize you are totally blind. The most important things I learned today in your lecture had nothing to with science or computing technology, it had to do with seeing the possibilities for personal growth; to seeing the opportunities from standing up to the challenge of losing one's sight. You, who have no eyes, have taught me how to see things that really matter.
A Theology According to Puderd
If we are really honest, we have to all confess to having some really absurd silly terms of endearment for our little furry friends and, horror of horrors, our not‑so‑furry friends, lovers, and soul mates. We would probably be mortified if others ever heard us use these terms in the light of day. Time for a true confession I have a small smoke‑gray cat that lets me live with her. Somehow the name she had when given to me, Frisky, has been transmuted to Puderd. Don't ask how. I guess it's the same process that transmutes Jan to Fuzzums. Life seems to have its little mysteries.
The important things here are the ecclesiastical merits of this fuzzy spokesfeline for a Higher One. I have attended bible school in Europe and have a letters in theology in one of the Hammermill photocopy paper boxes in my basement. Yet I have gained some deep insights from my small fur‑coated teacher I never learned from the scholarly men of the United Kingdom.
I have a small room in my house in which I keep an antique book cabinet filled with ancient books from prior centuries. I also have an oak table in there on which I have a large plaster Celtic Cross, back lit with a single orange light bulb in one of those little candlestick things you normally see in windows at Christmas, with clear lights in them. An olive‑wood clad New Testament I got in Jerusalem and the Episcopal Book of common Prayer are there also. There's a nine foot miniature‑leaf schiffelera filling up the remainder of the room.
With my mother having died this week I find I am going into this room a lot more than I normally do. It seems like a good place to wonder about stuff like the meaning of life, death, illness, dreams, God, the order of the universe. I just discovered last night it to be an exquisite place of learning about the peace of God. It was very late in the evening and I was sitting there on floor, legs crossed, facing Jan (Fuzzums), who was as I. We were having a time of prayer since the angst of the world and issues of mortality seemed much too close for comfort. In the midst of this other‑worldly time, a very short‑statured teacher came quietly into our midst, padding so silently in fur‑lined slippers.
This confident tutor, arranging herself in my legs, gave me a look as if to say "I have an important quiet lesson for you to learn, Watch." I didn't know that cat's legs could go in all these directions at once. This cat managed to assume a position of repose with all four feet somehow intertwined and at the same time pointing to Heaven. This spoke ever‑loudly to me, in the silence, of great trust and confidence. This little mentor went quite happily to sleep with a loud purr, proclaiming the peace of God.
The aura of peace, contentment, and serenity that surrounded this small teacher radiated out in ever‑widening circles. I had a vision of those ever‑widening circles moving out beyond the dim orange light of this sanctuary to enfold an entire troubled world. I even asked out loud if God was making himself known to me through my cat. The ancient writings of Faith tell us God spoke through the mouth of a donkey. Perhaps he speaks through cats in the atomic age. I still feel like whispering and tip‑toeing.
They didn't tell me in Sunday School that God can purr.
Orbiter
If you have had the rare and singularly spectacular experience of orbiting the earth in a space craft, you will quickly agree there is almost no experience that compares to it. Seeing the corona of the rising sun as one careens along at seventeen thousand miles an hour is inspiring beyond imagination. In mere moments, one is blasted from inky cosmic darkness into blinding solar brilliance. Black shadows transform into magnificent swirls of cerulean and platinum as morning spreads across Heaven.
A most tantalizing aspect of orbiting earth is the apparent horizontal flatness of land surfaces. One can look down through a porthole at vast mountain ranges and only distinguish them by virtue of small tufts of white on their peaks and hints of shadow cast by them early and late in the day.
If I am down on earth climbing mountains, I have an acute awareness of variations in elevation and inclinations. "Verticalness" can be a dizzying, overwhelming experience when roped to the side of a ten-thousand foot wall of granite for three weeks. One longs for, almost craves, anything horizontal. A ten-inch ledge can seem like a king-size bed. Yet, from three hundred miles up the overpowering "verticalness" is completely lost in a transcendent view of the world. Nothing has changed in the mountains, only my perspective has been altered.
I have a fellow working for me who has been confined to an air-driven wheel chair for thirty-one years after having been paralyzed from the chin down in an auto accident. He is quite unable to attend to any of his personal needs whatever. He is absolutely one hundred percent dependent on others.
I was visiting with Ron recently when we found ourselves musing about the paths we have each taken through life. Ron made the observation that I have had a life that would easily be in the top one percent of lives live because of my opportunity to travel the world, study in six American universities, work in four different careers, live in a castle in Europe, make good on many of my dreams. I have known but little suffering. Ron went on quickly to tell me that his life represented the bottom one percent of lives because of his vast unrelenting suffering and dependency. There was no argument from me. I assured him he was absolutely correct on both points.
At that moment it occurred to me that we both had taken radically different paths to get to the same place. We were both sitting in the same room, looking at the same computer screen, wanting to do the same thing and we were both drinking from the same bottle of soda, even if I had to hold the bottle and give him his through a straw.
I said "Ron, what matters now is that we share the most important thing in common, a saving faith in the Son of God. One day you and I will both be very far from here. For unnumbered tomorrows we will walk in the New Jerusalem. You will have forgotten that you ever lived in a wheel chair or that you couldn't even wipe away your own tears, which you've had plenty of. You will be too busy dashing about, exploring the place He has prepared for you. I will have forgotten that I was able to study in six universities and travel by jet plane all over the world. I will be too busy learning the real answers to the questions that matter most. Hardly will it matter that I had a fine home and more than enough money in the bank. I will be walking on those streets of transparent gold, trying to find you."
Heaven will be like an orbiting space shuttle in some respects. From that vantage we will no longer find ourselves in dark shadows between mountain peaks. From the great height of Heaven it is unlikely we will even be able to see the shadows below. We will simply find ourselves in eternal brilliance that never ceases.
But for a season of darkness do we see dimly for one day the Son will rise above the horizon of Heaven.
Last Dance
Children are often our greatest teachers. For one thing, they are much less conscious of human limitations and think most anything is possible. Such was the case of a small nameless little girl in a restaurant who empowered a terminally- ill wheel-chair bound octogenarian to rise above her limitations, to have a child-like faith that all things are, indeed, possible.
Recently, five of our Hospice patients were given an opportunity to maximize the pleasures of a balmy spring day. We all knew this would be the last spring for these dear souls. A church van was pressed into service and five youth group members volunteered to help make a memorable last outing possible for these patients.
The patients were loaded with their nurses, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and other medical paraphernalia into this chariot and taken on an expedition to a nearby mall where they could forget about the hard work of dying for a short while. And chances are the squealing happy voices of kids still resounded in that van from prior expeditions and added to the merciful forgetfulness of these patients' present difficult circumstances.
I remember how it was as a child to be confined in a hospital bed for weeks with a severe case of mononucleosis. I recall my utter entrancement with the ordinary world outside of my sickroom on that delicious day when I was released from the hospital. My hospital bed and its torments were soon forgotten. For our Hospice patients, darkened rooms and hushed uncertain voices were left behind and exchanged for a vast, bright, colorful world of fountains, trees, chattering families, delicious aromas, and endless possibility in that mall.
This world included the fine tasty southern vittles of Aunt Sue's restaurant. If you have ever been through a spell of hospital food, then you know how important this is. After a grand luncheon the patients wanted to listen to an organist playing dance music out on the patio and eat two large scoops of rich ice cream without a thought to the cholesterol count or fat grams. And so they did.
One of these fragile life-loving patients, Catherine, was wheel-chair bound, on continuous oxygen therapy, and a dancer. Once a soul has experienced dance, it is never content with the sidelines and is forever a dancer. Yet, her body had long since betrayed her and it had been years since she was whisked about a ballroom floor in a shimmering gown.
She knew it was now or never. It was time for the last dance. She asked our volunteer coordinator, Charlene, if she could dance with her. Charlene pondered how one gets a fragile terminally- ill patient out of a wheel chair, up on her feet and then dancing without stumbling over her oxygen tubing. Catherine somehow was able to cling to Charlene and they danced just a bit, right there, submitting to the limitations of her oxygen tubing. She then sat down exhausted, in her wheelchair.
Charlene is a very outgoing, social soul and was visiting about the patio with the other patients and staff following this small miracle. A greater one was soon to follow.
After some minutes Charlene looked up to see Ms Catherine had taken off her oxygen, arisen from her wheelchair, and was now dancing in the middle of the floor with a small angel of a child. This child had not yet been taught about the limitations of terminal disease or oxygen tubes. They danced round and round that floor. Catherine returned and sat down in her wheelchair, put her oxygen back on, and smiled. She died but a few days later, having danced to the end.
This child-angel had helped this departing soul to fulfill a last dream. Perhaps this child also knew that Catherine would be dancing when she experienced the magic of Heaven and would have wanted to freshen up on her dancing just a bit before arriving.
The Christian scriptures tell us that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Perhaps that child had whispered in Catherine's ear and told her this was really true. She believed it and transcended her own weaknesses.
This dear patient's nurse was present on that dance floor and was simply astounded that Catherine could possibly get up out of her chair, let alone dance, and do this without oxygen. Catherine later said that was the best day she had in many years.
Yes, all things are possible for those who believe.
Tee-Off
An octogenarian golfer, Mr. Carter, could only walk the emerald links in his memories when he was admitted to our Hospice program as a patient. An inoperable cerebral aneurysm had stolen most of his sight and would soon steal all of his life. Before this dark thief stole in on him, he walked and played at least thirty-six holes of golf everyday. He lived for golf.
This swinger of yesteryear had a birthday soon after his becoming a Hospice patient and our volunteer staff was in a quandary as to what they might do to help him celebrate his birthday in proper fashion. One of the truly splendid things about Hospice is the recognition of important days for patients by staff and volunteers; anniversaries, birthdays, holidays. Hospice workers know too well these days probably won't occur but once again for the patients.
The staff decided to surprise Mr. Carter with a luncheon at a restaurant of his choice. What they didn't tell him was the nature of dessert, a visit to the Picken's Country Club where it had been arranged with the golf pro for a tour of the course in a cart with detailed explanation of the course by an experienced golfer.
Following a fine birthday lunch, Mr. Carter, his nurse, social worker, home-health aide, and the volunteer coordinator went for what proved a magical Tru-Flite experience. While an experienced golfer talked him through the course, telling him the distances on the fairways and the lay of the greens, Mr. Carter offered his suggestions on club use; a seven iron or a pitching wedge, or putter. In his mind, he might as well have been at the Masters in Augusta with full galleries cheering him on.
At the club house following, Mr. Carter was given the opportunity to show he was still in swing with life. The staff that had accompanied him to the country club maneuvered him to a putting green, guided his hand to the cup and let him step back his paces from there to challenge the others to a putting contest. He was virtually blind to this world but in his dreams he could still see. He actually went on to win that small putting contest with the Hospice staff.
That putting contest never made it to the annals of the PGA but it did make it to annals of Heaven, where, no doubt, Mr. Carter has bragged about it often, but not as much as he did his final exploit on the golf course.
About this time Hospice was arranging a fund-raising benefit tournament and it was suggested that if Mr. Carter were still alive when the tournament took place, he should be the one to hit the first ball of the contest. When he was told of this plan, one might have thought he had been told he was going to live anew as a successor to Arnold Palmer or one of the other golf greats. He was excited. Every time a nurse or health worker went out to his house, they were quizzed on the status of the tournament. Was it still going to happen? Would it be soon enough?
Just before the great event it was announced that a special guest, Mr. Carter would be hitting the first ball to open the tournament. By this time he was essentially blind and had to be led to the T. A ball was placed for him. He was put in position, told where the ball was, given a club, and allowed to follow his dream. He hit the ball, as if laser guided, more than one hundred and fifty yards, perhaps one hundred seventy-five yards down the center of that fairway.
'Did I hit it?' he asked. 'Where'd it go?' The other contestants erupted in applause. For him, Augusta had arrived in time. He stayed the whole tournament to see who would win. We already knew who the real winner was. The others just raised money. Mr. Carter raised our awareness of how real dreamers can do just about anything.
For the remaining days of his life, Mr. Carter could speak of no other thing than the magic of that Tru-Flite ball going down the exact center of that fairway.
"Call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things which thou knowest not."
Some Parting Toughts
It has been well said that a life worth living is a life worth recording. The reality is that all of our lives are worth living, and recording. It's just that some of us don't know it yet.
No matter what your life experience has been or will be, there are priceless nuggets of humor, inspiration, magic, and faith that can reach out across time and space to enrich the lives of others, to scratch the deepest itches of their souls. From reading some of these stories you know that now for yourself.
In my volunteer experience with Hospice visitation I have found truly inspiring examples of the great wealth to be mined from other's journeys through life. In the back halls of nursing homes one can find uncut diamonds, sometimes crown jewels. Some of my best finds have come out of lives that have only a third-grade education. The wisdom of some of these would put to shame the great professors of Europe.
The sad reality is that many of the best nuggets are forever lost to the collective human experience because no one ever mined them and recorded them. Few people keep dairies or life journals. Fewer yet write autobiographies. Even fewer have a biographer write down their stories. I have often stood over ancient graves in the cemeteries of Europe and wondered what incredible life stories got buried along with their owners six feet below the emerald turf. "Last Dance" and "Tee Off" would have been forever lost to the past if I had not made the effort to take a tape player and make a trip to get a transcription of these two inspiring events from a witness to them. Yet, I can't be everywhere with a tape player to mine gold nuggets. In most cases, we have to make our own efforts to conserve these for others.
Part of what compelled me to compile some of my own stories and those of other people here in these pages is the desire to see them preserved in the public domain for posterity. There is a self-serving urge to gain a tiny bit of immortality this way but also a more altruistic belief that some of these stories may actually benefit others, scratching some deep inner need.
I would encourage you to mine your own life and those of people around you and begin archiving these treasures for future generations before they are lost to the mute past. We might just have a less itchy world as a result.
No matter what your life experience has been or will be, there are priceless nuggets of humor, inspiration, magic, and faith that can reach out across time and space to enrich the lives of others, to scratch the deepest itches of their souls. From reading some of these stories you know that now for yourself.
In my volunteer experience with Hospice visitation I have found truly inspiring examples of the great wealth to be mined from other's journeys through life. In the back halls of nursing homes one can find uncut diamonds, sometimes crown jewels. Some of my best finds have come out of lives that have only a third-grade education. The wisdom of some of these would put to shame the great professors of Europe.
The sad reality is that many of the best nuggets are forever lost to the collective human experience because no one ever mined them and recorded them. Few people keep dairies or life journals. Fewer yet write autobiographies. Even fewer have a biographer write down their stories. I have often stood over ancient graves in the cemeteries of Europe and wondered what incredible life stories got buried along with their owners six feet below the emerald turf. "Last Dance" and "Tee Off" would have been forever lost to the past if I had not made the effort to take a tape player and make a trip to get a transcription of these two inspiring events from a witness to them. Yet, I can't be everywhere with a tape player to mine gold nuggets. In most cases, we have to make our own efforts to conserve these for others.
Part of what compelled me to compile some of my own stories and those of other people here in these pages is the desire to see them preserved in the public domain for posterity. There is a self-serving urge to gain a tiny bit of immortality this way but also a more altruistic belief that some of these stories may actually benefit others, scratching some deep inner need.
I would encourage you to mine your own life and those of people around you and begin archiving these treasures for future generations before they are lost to the mute past. We might just have a less itchy world as a result.
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