Preparing the Way . . . Or Not: Music I

I don't know how or where you are these days, so I will simply say that, for me, music was a long time coming back.  Music ~ so important to my life of prayer, of celebration, of sadness, of driving (!), of everything ~ for at least a year after Josh died, I couldn't stand to listen to it.  I recall slipping a copy of  Vivaldi's Four Seasons into the car's CD player that first winter and nearly driving off the road.  It sounded . . . sour, bitter, off key . . .    .  It was months before I tried again.

 

So when I offer some music as preparation for Thanksgiving, it's with those memories of enforced silence in mind.  Listen or not, as you are able.

Come, Ye Thankful People, Come ~ First Baptist Church, Asheville NC

Preparing the Way . . . Or Not: Be Quietly Courageous

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I want to encourage us all: Be brave.  Be quietly and extravagantly courageous.   Be tenacious.

There is an unseen community among us at Thanksgiving, the community of those for whom the empty place at the table is the most visible one, even if no one else sees it. 

We tend to think of courage as painted with huge, sweeping streaks of red and orange.  Valor on the battlefield, triumph at the top of the mountain, arms flung wide at the finish line.

I want to suggest that courage is also represented by fragile, thin lines scratched across the canvas of life in pale hues, colors barely visible.

Thanksgiving courage is the mother whose inner heart trembles as she whips the potatoes in the kitchen, surrounded by the voices of women chatting about children home from college.

Thanksgiving courage is the dad outside tossing a football with the nieces and nephews as his mind replays his own child's last game a decade earlier.

Thanksgiving courage is the young girl who laughs with friends in the evening before returning home to the empty apartment.

Thanksgiving courage is the elderly man who walks his dog quietly down the street, gazing wistfully at the lighted living room windows and the driveways filled with cars in his neighborhood.

 

Thanksgiving courage is the four ladies in their nineties at the dining room table in the assisted living facility, talking quietly of family traditions long past and turning their faces resolutely toward Christmas, when children and grandchildren from California and New York will arrive for a few days.

 

Thanksgiving courage is the woman whose husband's disability precludes his ever coming home again, smiling gently as her friends talk over kitchen remodeling crises.

 

Thanksgiving courage is the parents who take dinner baskets to the families living at Ronald McDonald House,  remembering their own holidays spent in cramped quarters far from home and hoping against hope for a miracle.

 

One of my friends once commented on her surprise at discovering, over and over again, that people whom she had envied as they talked about their trips, their homes, their super-sized grown-up toys, so often harbored silent stories of deep loss.

 

Yes. 

 

So: Be quietly and hugely brave out there in the grocery aisles and around the office water fountain and at the pre-holiday craft sales.  Just do it.

 

Preparing the Way ~ Or Not: Stones of Memory

One of the reasons the holidays are so difficult is that the feeling of Absence is so intense.  There is not a day ~ not an hour, really ~ in my life in which I am not aware of my son's absence, but the holidays, with their memories and traditions, music and fragrances, exacerbate to the nth degree  the sense that there is a hole in the universe.

 

And if you are anything like me, one of the most painful realities of both daily and holiday absence is the silence on the part of friends and family.  Among my most treasured possessions now are the very few emails,  most of them written by college friends, filled with stories and thoughts about Josh. 

 

At Josh's funeral service, one of our adult friends mentioned in his eulogy the sight of Josh racing across a soccer field, blonde hair flying in the wind.  It was such a gift to me, the knowledge that someone else had noticed a sight that I had so loved.

 

So I challenge us all: Let's do the same for someone else this holiday.  Let's each write a note to someone who has lost a child, a parent, a friend, a brother or sister, and fill it with concrete, tangible, loving memories.  We all know they haven't forgotten, but we all know, too, how much they need to hear that others haven't either.

 

A few stones of memory, offered as small but precious gifts.





(Previous related posts are linked in the tab above.)

Preparing the Way ~ Or Not: Milkweed Spirituality

I feel a particular bond of affinity with milkweed plants.

 

My grandmother used to "raise" monarch butterflies, which is to say that she would go out and collect milkweed leaves on which tiny pearls of monarch eggs had been laid or on which very small caterpillars were already munching, store them in mason jars on her back porch, and replenish the jars with leaves in increasing numbers as the caterpillars chomped their way to full size.  Eventually the caterpillars transformed themselves into sea foam green chrysalises highlighted by strings of golden dots. A couple of weeks later the chrysalises would darken and the black and orange wings of a monarch butterfly would become visible; then, the first crack in the casing would appear, the butterfly would emerge to dry and expand its wings, and, finally, off it would flutter, perhaps to lay its own eggs on milkweed plants and eventually to sojourn to Mexico. 

 

If you google image "monarch butterfly life cycle," lots of photos of this exquisite miracle will appear.  For us, it was part of summer's routine: check the jars on the back porch, and bring them into the dining room to watch as butterfly emergence time drew near.

 

Last week as I took a long walk through one of the county parks near my church, I happened upon a few milkweed plants in their final stage of life.

 

It occurred to me that the plants themselves illustrate something of the spiral of a mother's grief during the holidays.  Closed tightly and barricaded with small prickly stubs?  Cracked open to spill forth seeds that might take root next spring?  Pod exhausted, seeds strewn, nothing left but the feathery wisps that once carried transported seeds via wind power?

 

Each year is different; sometimes, each day.  Each stage, sometimes brief, sometimes recycled again and again, sometimes extended for years, carries the invisible weight of its own terrible beauty.  Life begins and ends, and the mystery persists.

In which milkweed stage are you today?  This holiday season?

Preparing the Way ~ Or Not: Hospitality

The Hospitality of Abraham



In her poem, "Making the House Ready for the Lord," Mary Oliver writes

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice  . . . (read the entire poem here).

How do  you prepare for the presence of God in all of God's intimacy and intensity during the holidays? 

You might think of holiday preparation as a matter of doing for others: cleaning, baking, decorating, purchasing and wrapping.    You prepare for the presence of God by preparing for others.

But how do you show hospitality to God through caring for yourself when those other preparations have become burdensome, painful, or perhaps no longer doable at all?

Who, or what, are the mice, the squirrels, the limp raccoon, the dogs, the cats, the foxes, the sparrows, the shivering sea-geese who have taken up residence in your own life?

Do you need to shoo them out the door?

Do you need to welcome them in some way that has not yet made itself known to you?

Do you need to make everything shine for God?

Or is God perhaps going to work on polishing up something for you which once became tarnished and which you believe cannot shine anew?

 

 

Preparing the Way ~ Or Not: A Holiday Retreat for Bereaved Parents

Nothing elaborate.  No charge.  No counseling. Not a substitute for mental health care.  No private site. Not even an extra site.  If you'd like to comment or discuss, go for it.  If you prefer to maintain your own counsel, no one will know.

All I'm offering is a weekly or so very brief meditation and/or quote and suggestion for prayer or contemplation or meditation or pondering, whether in your designated quiet time or in a small group or as you go about your daily life.  I will post the links in the tab above, so that you may catch up at any time, visit or not as you please, or simply have a sort of table of contents.

The general point of view will be a Christian one, but you shouldn't be surprised to find material and reflections occasioned by other religious traditions.

If you are interested, please stop by.  The focus will be on bereaved parents, but you may find a nugget or two worth your while even if you are facing a different sort of loss. 

Why?  Truthfully, I find the pathway through the end-of-year holidays to be a winding, often rocky, root-strewn trail, one over which unsteady boulders loom at every bend.  This will be our sixth holiday season without our son, and I still frequently think that if I had only myself to consider, I would pull the front door closed and retreat into the comfortable darkness of my library until mid-January. 

 

Nonetheless, the sixth year is different from the first.  Although I write about it here and post material on FB, I seldom discuss my own loss during my daily interactions.  I care for a lot of people who have their own troubles, and my task is to help them, not to douse them in my own sorrow.  And I do, on a daily basis, find much for which to be grateful, in my son's short life, in the lives of my other children, and in most of the other experiences into which I stumble.  It's possible that I'm at a point at which I might be able to concoct something worthwhile for others.

 

But don't look for sappy sweet here.  Don't look for platitudes.  Don't look for pretend.

 

Look for the real. 

 

If you are thinking about smashing all the ornaments against the brick fireplace wall as you are simultaneously considering the perfect location on the tree for each one, this might be the place for you.