He, She, It

The giggles of my elementary aged classmates still resonate in my head as I recall the introduction of pronouns in English grammar when we came to the third person singular "he, she, it." There was hilarity, for some, in slurring "she" and "it" together to sound out a certain four letter word. There's some irony to that for me now. I am aware that the combination of she and it is what we often find ourselves in when pronouns are used frequently.

Oh that we could avoid the confusion of she, he, they, them. Who are all these people? We may think we know, but have we lost track of the thread of reference, for example, when she told her that they didn't want to do what he had suggested to them?

Rhonda's advice? Just watch out. Repeat names when necessary, no matter how cumbersome and ineloquent the repetition may seem.

After working for many years as an English speaking link to our community within a church congregation where the native language barely includes any pronouns at all,

I think they're on to something. Or should Rhonda say, Rhonda thinks languages that include virtually no pronouns are on to something.

Peace in the Garden

It seems too early. It's only late July after all. But the time seems right. I've remarked before that I am thankful to know signs of life even when they are barely visible. I consider it a gift. And now, standing in the midst of my garden, among the lush, green tomato plants I recognize there is also a gift in knowing signs of death. Of end. Of knowing the time has come to pull the tomato plants from my garden, and to call the season done. Even if I'm not ready, it is time. And there can be rejoicing and thanksgiving even as the seemingly vibrant plants are pulled up by the roots.

There still hangs tiny fruit on the plants. Seems hopeful. But, I've watched these fruit grow grotesque simply by not becoming what they are meant to be ... growing not in size but in hardness, never ripening.

The plants on the other hand, would easily fool a passerby. Mighty plants they are, standing head and shoulders above me. They look productive, as though a bounty of fruit should be released daily. But, sadly, what they do instead is absorb all the nutrients of the soil for themselves. Whether the plants themselves actually have what they need to do so or not, they are  not passing the necessary ingredients for life to their fruit. By making a canopy of shade that is beautiful and beckoning to onlooker, it appears the plants have denied the life sustaining elements that would be the fruit's.

As I do when watching for signs of life, I've watched this phenomenon of stagnation in the garden. Every morning and evening I've headed to the backyard with great hope of the turn where I'd see some withering of the plants and some growth and ripening of the fruit. But, no, and there on the day in late July, I knew the truth. And I also understood better the fig plant that did not bear, and the withered branches that were pruned so that the remaining vine could be strong and healthy and produce fruit.

Even in this great disappointment of knowing there shall be no tomatoes, I feel peace. There is peace in the garden, because things are as they should be, even when my hopes are disappearing and my plans are failing. There is a rightness to doing what's hard when the time is right. There is peace in knowing, in watching the cycles and knowing the process. Knowing gives a peace about decisions and direction. Knowing gives a confidence and understanding beyond our own.

I have learned to say that in making decisions, I do what gives me the greatest sense of peace. Because what brings peace is right.

Perfect Flaws

Even as I write this I am at one of the world's most beautiful white sanded beaches. I am with just my husband for a week in a house built for 10. In this sanctuary, I was drawn to the bookcase and found In the Sanctuary of Women, written by Jan L Richardson. Yes. This is it. This is what we women need. We need not the threats to inner assurance from the next "Most Beautiful Woman." We need not the threats to our own confidence from those who steal the glances. We need not to be weighed and measured and then be found wanting. We women need the sanctuary of women. And, we too, need to be that sanctuary.

How many times, in an effort to encourage other women to keep the faith, or stay the course of personal validation of their very selves, have I said, "True, the opposing voices are many and louder, but there are voices speaking a different truth. They just aren't as easily heard." So, having gained from the wisdom of Dr. Seuss with Horton Hears a Who!, I shall keep adding my voice  just like Jojo's "Yopp," in order to grow the hearing of what matters for humanity ... and especially for womanity.

You see, again the promotion of perfection is plaguing me where I am. Perfection in the physical manifestation of womanity. And, I find that not only am I not impressed when that perfection is brought forward for us all to applaud, envy, and emulate, I am disgusted. And offended. Because the very moment that perfection is cracked, or wrinkled, or blemished, it is no longer of any value. And, so goes the message, is the person bearing that perfection.

All of us, even those born with something close to this perfection, will eventually or have already moved out of it. Beyond it and into a world of, what? Trash? Garbage? A world of discard? According to the message of this culture in which I live, yes.

However, this message is not according to the culture in which I live, this is according to me. And, according to me, just as it is the flaws in a diamond that make one different from the rest of the perfect ones, it is the "flaws" in each of us that set us apart. Make us matter in some way that matters. There are stories, and life experiences, and wisdom and understanding in many of the marks of "imperfection" we carry. For your enjoyment, however, let me add that I have a tray with 22 cosmetics that I apply virtually every day. But, I do that because it pleases me. I like it. It's fun. I am not afraid to be without those cosmetics, although my spider veins in my legs have been known to scare children, so in certain circumstances the make-up frees me to think on things other than hiding my legs from children. And make-up on my face lends a certain power with other people that doesn't seem to be generated without it. Oh. There's the rub.

Ladies, if we're not careful we'll be our own worst enemy. Every time we doubt our value, every time we doubt our beauty, every time we hide ourselves away under layers and layers of anything we apply to gain someone else's approval, we diminish the opportunity to be wholly ourselves. And we deny the world the opportunity to know that whole self. Women must lead the way as only women can. And I mean with a confident and gentle best, and the ease of grounded certainty.

Each generation must learn for themselves, and that to me is a sad truth. And so, we older women must be present, and gather round the young women to nurture that wholeness. This morning, even as I applied my own regimen of make-up, I recognized that I am friend to many women, young and old. I have what some would consider to be unusual friends, being the older white woman that I am. But what I know this morning is that this diverse assortment of woman can rest with me, as we ought to get to rest in this world in which we live. They can rest from expectations and self-perceived shortcomings. Women can rest with me as we ought to get to rest in the world in which we live. We don't easily have that luxury, though, so we must, we simply must, ladies and gentlemen, be and offer that rest to as many as we can.

Twenty til Eight in the Evening

It's twenty til eight in the evening, and I am at home. I'm beginning to wander around the house, moving from tiny chore to tiny chore, idly tidying here and there. Stopping to pet the cats on the head. It's coolish for July, and I've been out in the backyard enjoying the garden, taking time to just check in on all my plant friends out there, and feeling the touch of tomato plants as I brush by. I consider this bliss, and a bliss for which I no longer feel a need to apologize.

I consider that, during the symphony season, the rehearsals will have begun only 10 minutes ago. Presbyterian churches are just beginning committee meetings. Soccer practices, football games, date nights, and church services, all would be underway about now. But, I am at home. No apologies.

I've been there, done that deal of dashing. Dashing from one scheduled event to the next. Allotting 12 minutes for the grocery store, 7 minutes in the post office, hours in the car pool line. I've been there, done that with dropping in the bed, exhausted, only to wake up to start it again the next day, exhausted.

Of course, though, I was just exhausted from living life fully, from taking advantage of all the wondrous experiences life has to offer. For much of the time, it was all good. But, even so, I wondered. I wondered what my grandparents knew when they sat on the porch in the evenings. And, I mean really sat on the porch. No apologies.

What I know now is that they worked a farm. They worked from before sunup to just after sundown. The last task I would remember of them for the evening was to slop the hogs with the bucket of remnants left from the day's meals, including supper that was just completed. Then, in the dusk, after supper, they sat on the front porch together with whatever visiting family might be around and watched the evening roll across the hill. Few cars ever passed, so it really was basically just watching that hill across the road disappear into darkness.

I've wondered about that ritual many times, even as I screeched into the school parking lot well past bedtime to retrieve my children from field trips, or band trips. Or sat in the bleachers or concert halls well past bedtime to cheer and applaud the accomplishments of the younger generation. I've wondered about that ritual even as I've sat in well intentioned meetings that have the power to hold me in that place, but for what really?

Years of wondering vaporized with a sudden realization that there was a beauty to that ritual. A closure. Measurement to the day. Barely a break in the day from plowing for harvesting or bunching tobacco or milking the cows or gathering the eggs. But, when the day was done, it was done. No apologies. It was time for rest, for reflection and conversation, for engagement of a different sort with oneself and others. A Sabbath built into every day.

Thank goodness I no longer have to wonder. It now seems very wise to me. The evenings are sacred. No apologies.

It's called busy work, though I've never completely understood why. Busy work supposedly let's our hands do the work, disengaged from our brains. We're just busy. Not engaged. Or, at least that's how I understand it. And, so, it was busy work that I was doing at the kitchen sink, scrubbing that last pot, trying to be delicate and aggressive at the same time ... getting that perfect balance of pressure to remove the baked on goop while preserving that valuable finish on the surface of the pan, when she came to mind. That friend of mine with the story that still makes me chuckle years later.

Her story is that, while a teenager at home alone, she literally scrubbed the teflon finish right off her mom's electric skillet. It was the dickens of a job, she'd say. The elbow grease and commitment to get the last of that "mess" off that skillet was Herculean. But, by golly, she'd done it.

That story engaged my disengaged brain and set me on a course of thinking that when I remember friends, I remember stories. I can identify friends by a single story that makes me laugh, builds me up in encouragement, or causes me to see life differently than before.

I remember my first Tennessee friend. From my new front yard after moving across the country, literally, from Oregon when I was five years old and scared for friends, I looked across the road  and saw her leaning up against the corner of her house. She was six years old and wearing a dress up bridal gown and veil. And she was looking back across the road at me, who might have even been wearing a glittery dress up prom dress. My heart leapt in assurance of friendship!

There's the friend who flew to Houston, Texas to help move me and my Suburban back home to Alabama after a summer at MD Anderson Cancer Center there. In response to my attempts to reimburse her for the flight she'd made to Houston, she'd said, "Well, you can pay me back if you want. But, be warned, I'm going to change that money into quarters and dump it on your front lawn." Enough said.

I have laughed so hard with another friend that we've thought we really might have "busted" the proverbial gut and might have to make a run to the emergency room. I also think of her every time I peel cucumbers or carrots, picturing her graceful stance at the cutting board, carefully and deliberately preparing salad to share with visitors. But in that gracious and abundant offering of salad there was a dash of hilarity when once it was asked if Godzilla would be joining us for salad.

There's the group of four, who making our way through the dim, vast tunnels of Gibraltar came to be known as The Unit. We've been stranded on a train in France after national news making catastrophic train failure. We've found ourselves not speaking to each other when, during an episode in our relationship lovingly referred to as "The Madrid Moment," we'd found ourselves on the wrong train in Madrid on the infamous seventh day of travel together ... the day all travelers grow to hate their travel companions no matter how much love is there. Y'all, we know who we are.

When I say "we gave our dog away at a Strawberry Plains gas station," there are new friends who know the rest of the miraculous story. Elton John sing-alongs around the piano in the 1970"s? You definitely know who you are! And, a forever sister despite divorce binds us as Heart Sisters with a saga all our own.

I revisit these stories as often as I revisit these friends. These stories, all our stories, are the threads that stitch us together. We've got to tell our stories, then retell them again to savor and set in a firm foundation of friendship.  Because of that revisiting, I can say with accuracy that these friends know who they are to me. If they don't, I've got some visiting to do. You and yours, too.

At the bottom of my résumé, under Other Interests, I have included the following:

• Creating programs and opportunities for helping others reach their full potential and which improve the human condition
• Giving comfort to those in need
• Servant leadership
• Traveling (global, local, all types for cultural experiences)
• Reading books of purpose and value

Reviewing that résumé now, a few years after having composed it, I can see clearly that these are ideals rather than interests, but the list still makes perfect sense to me. These ideals matter in the definition of who I am. But why does that particular list matter so much to me that I am intent on keeping it in my résumé, even though I now can see that it is in a language perhaps not always understood by potential employers? In trying to clearly convey who I am, am I unintentionally esoteric? 

To be clear, then, what I'm trying to say is that I want to dedicate myself to work that matters in some way for not just myself, but for others. What I am trying to say is that I want the travel I experience to open me up to a better understanding of the greater world in both its glories and the needs of its people. What I am trying to say is that I am inspired by non-fiction books, which speak to the real life experiences of others from which I am inspired either to do likewise or to carry on. 

When feeling overwhelmed, for example, I'm apt to say, "If Dear Mad'm can do it, so can I!" Check her out. Stella Walthall Patterson is her name, and "Dear Mad'm" is her story. It's definitely one of the 1940's, peppered here and there with occasional quirky political incorrectness, but one from which we can still gain. And, that's the point. To gain intrinsically, to grow in our ideals, in our virtues and values, and our ethical treatment of all of life. Live life experiences from which we can gain. Read books from which we can gain. All this can shape us to be more the kind of person we want to be. 

I have a top seven, so far, of books that have done that for me. Stories to which I go back for regular helpings.  "Dear Mad'm" is in that top seven for its story of an 80 year old woman striking out to live alone with her "young legs" in an isolated cabin in the mountains.  So is "Angela's Ashes," from which I learned I'd rather be the oppressed than the oppressor. "Isaac's Storm," taught me that whatever storm or natural disaster we encounter in our own lives has already, most likely, happened in the life of someone else. We must be sensitive to and aware that Isaac stood on the coast of Galveston in early September 1900, feeling inadequate in his job as meteorologist, suspecting that something powerful was approaching that he couldn't even begin to name, nor from which he could save the people he loved. 

"Christy" was only 19 years old when she boarded a train, alone, in Buncombe County North Carolina and entered into a place of need in Appalachia, not far from where I grew up in East Tennessee, and left the mark of education and opportunity for the people of that area.  "The Long Walk to Freedom" never fails to remind me that it is possible to own a life, as Nelson Mandela did, that peacefully yet dramatically changes the course of a nation caught up in violent turmoil. And I pray anytime I want to complain about the cold or uncomfortable aspects of life, that Corrie Ten Boom will always be close by in remembrance. "The Hiding Place" calls us all to do better, and more, than complain. 

Rounding out the life shaper list, and truly, in my opinion and belief, the Greatest Story Ever Told, is the Bible. These Words hold the story of God's plan for Creation, and that includes us. It is that plan upon which I rest and work and get on with that which is pure, that which is lovely, that which is admirable. Think on those things.

The Return of Breath

I'm glad I know signs of life when I see them. Were that not the case, my grand gardenia bush would be a pile of clippings by the side of the road awaiting Monday morning trash pickup. It was this gardenia bush that, during my house-shopping saga in the spring of 2011, met me at the side of the front porch steps and said, "Welcome home!" It was a remarkable sight, this gardenia, for north Alabama, standing nearly as tall as I, and as rotund as a Mini Cooper. And, it wasn't just all talk because over the summer it produced dozens and dozens of fragrant flowers.

My mother had grown up in Jasper, Alabama and had enjoyed the somewhat common nature of a gardenia bush there. But when she was transplanted to East Tennessee, way up near Bristol and Johnson City, she'd crossed the line of temperate climate that gardenias need. That didn't stop her longing, or her trying, to return gardenias to her personal landscape, though. How well I remember the many attempts at planting and sustaining a gardenia bush in our front yard, our back yard, or down on the farm. Each little bush had come in a pot and was garnished with blossoms. It seemed possible. But, sadly each gardenia bush that was planted succumbed to the early falls and long, cold winters. Finally, it was a tabletop gardenia every spring that was her consolation.

So, when I encountered this grand show of a gardenia bush, something within me was stirred. And, that welcoming gardenia represented the new life that swept into my grieving daughter when she followed me in through the front door for the first time, breathed her first full, deep breath of 3 years, and said softly, "this feels like home."

The winter of 2014 in Huntsville AL was hard for all living creatures, the Arctic Blast phenomenon that just wouldn't stop, and this, the following spring, I noticed my gardenia bush ... well ... it looked like I might have to accept some pretty hard facts. The leaves from the past summer lay dead and dry around its base, the skinny little twig branches were barren when other signs of spring were bursting forth all around it. It was as though the gardenia bush stood alone, suddenly no longer aware of the coming of spring and the chance for new growth and life.

Still, I hoped. I hoped against hope. I bent over the bush, looking closely for new growth, snapping off tips of tiny arms that once bore the blossoms. Weeks passed, and I went one morning to prune the dead from the bush fully aware and brokenhearted that the pruning might go to the roots. Still yet I found the gardenia's twigs would snap off like the brittleness in my heart over losing this grand gardenia, until ... one twig bent under pressure, it gave way with some softness. Then another, and another. So, I took my clippers and backed off, giving a bit more time of watching for any signs of life within.

Weeks later, a day of rejoicing came when close inspection of the bush revealed the tiniest of green growth, barely even perceptible, marching up the branches! There is life! There shall be blossoms! This experience reminds me of the care that must be taken with all that has life. Nurture life during tough winters, prune away the brittleness, wait patiently for return of breath.