Goin' Down to Mama's

Cheeto Update

To my friends who have been kind enough to inquire about the health and well-being of Cheeto, the stray charmer who adopted us: Cheeto has settled into a favorite spot on the sofa, where has managed to achieve a moderate level of comfort and is learning to relax. Hank the Cat is doing his best to accept the interloper. They do not, by any stretch of the imagination, love each other. But they have achieved what Henry Kissinger would call detente. It comes and it goes, but they have achieved it. Sort of. On their good days. As long as they don't run out of cat treats to distract them when hostilities erupt. One day at a time, kitties. One day at a time.

Whisper of the Wind

Last night I stepped outside onto our deck and heard a chilly wind whispering in the trees. It's still there this morning. With the possible exceptions of surf on sand and a hard, steady rain on an old tin roof, there's no more wonderful sound on earth than the wind in the trees. I'm not even picky about the tree—palm and pine are equally soothing and mysterious, each in its own way. That's one of many reasons I love fall—it's a season of movement. After the heat and stillness of summer, you start to feel the chilly wind and hear the rustle of leaves, and you just know that . . . something's happenin' out there!

[Image by Joy Zaehringer @ Freerangestock.com]

You Bring the Potato Salad and I'll Make the Baked Beans

This coming Sunday, our church will celebrate Harvest Day, our annual homecoming, and I'm thinking about these two ladies. That's Mama and Aunt Joyce. Right about now, they would be huddled up over a pot of coffee at my mother's kitchen table, figuring out who's bringing what to the fellowship hall. Aunt Joyce taught me how to make her baked beans, which I still prepare for every summertime gathering. I haven't quite mastered Mama's potato salad—she'll have to give me another lesson, I guess. Mine has a tendency to become mashed potatoes with mayo. I miss seeing Aunt Joyce in our church yard, with her purse dangling off her elbow as she clutched her Bible. I miss the way you could NOT get her to the car after services because she wanted to visit with everybody. I miss the way she wouldn't hesitate to "straighten out" a preacher if she thought he needed it—or tell me what I needed to do to whip the choir into shape. And I sure miss seeing that Pyrex dish with her initials nail-polished to the bottom, completely emptied by fellowshipping Baptists. Now Mama and I plan together. I'll be bringing Publix fried chicken. Somehow, I have a feeling that menu planning with me, as opposed to menu planning with Aunt Joyce, is just not the same:)

More from the Farm

Y'all, one of these days I'm going to have to put my cousin Jimmy on the Goin' Down to Mama's payroll. He sent me this picture over the weekend, and I absolutely love it. Can't believe I had never seen it before. On the far left, the gentleman with the impressive mustache is Grandme's father and my great-grandfather, Walter "Big Daddy" Wyatt. Seated on the tractor is Grandme's baby brother (and Jimmy's father), my Great Uncle Clyde, who used to tease me by calling me his "old-maid niece" and telling me every Sunday to let him know when he needed to get his white wedding suit pressed—I got even by naming a cat after him:). And then on the far right is another brother Grandme was very close to, my Great Uncle Adam. He died when I was really small, but I still think I have vague memories of his visits to Grandme's—or maybe I just heard her talk about him so much that I feel like I remember him. My mother and Jimmy spent many happy childhood summers swimming in Uncle Adam and Aunt Vera's lake and roller skating at the rink they used to run. All three of these men were very dear to my grandmother. And let me tell you, that little woman was picky:) Here's another new favorite Jimmy sent me—it's Uncle Clyde with the Maid of Cotton:

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

I've always wondered what it would be like to find a message in a bottle, washed up on the sand from far across the water. I realize email is much more efficient, but it's just not the same. Do you even remember mail—honest to goodness letters from friends and family—words on paper folded into an envelope, addressed and stamped, dropped off at the post office, and delivered to your door—maybe your faraway door? I do, especially when I was in college, having fun with my new grown-up life but still missing just about everything back home.

I've always known, in my head, that many books of the New Testament are letters from Paul to churches he couldn't get to at the moment. I've known it, but I didn't really feel it until I read them one after another. My study Bible says that he usually dictated them to a scribe and then wrote a personal note and signature at the end, in his own handwriting, so the churches would know the letters had come from him. Many of the people in these churches were new Christians, just beginning to understand their faith and wondering if they were doing everything they were supposed to. Can you imagine trying to explain the gift of grace and forgiveness in a letter? Or trying to teach entire churches how to live and work together that way? Of course, Paul and other missionaries visited these churches in person, but travel was slow. The letters came between visits, bridging the gap and holding these early congregations together.

Paul's letters have that same effect today—bridging the gap between the earliest disciples and those of us trying to find our way in a modern world that can be overwhelming. Every age has its challenges, I guess. But the sustaining grace Paul found through Christ and preached through his letters is constant:

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:12-13

. . . The only thing that counts is faith
expressing itself through love.
Galatians 5:6

 

Pickin' Time

This is one of my favorite family pictures. My cousin Grey asked me to find some shots of the farm back in the day, and I ran across this one as I was looking through my iPhoto files. That Grey's dad, my Uncle Bud, on his brand-new picker. My Uncle Clyde is standing to the immediate left, and my Aunt Grace's dad, Mr. Defford Morris, is to the far left. I'm not sure who that is on the right, wearing glasses. (Oh, cousin Jimmy? I'm sure you can identify:)

I think this was Uncle Bud's first cotton picker, which he told me he bought in 1961. It could only pick one row at a time, but compared to picking by hand, he said, that was REALLY moving up in the world!

I always look forward to this time of year, when the fields are white and the pickers start rolling. I still get a rush of childhood giddiness when Mother or Daddy says, "Y'all want to ride down in the field and watch 'em pick a little while?" And I still pester whoever's driving (usually Grey these days) for a ride on that big John Deere. If you were raised on a farm, I guess tractors and cotton pickers are sort of like rides at the fair—you never really outgrow them. I miss the rumble of the old Harpersville cotton gin across from our church. It doesn't run any more, and they tore most of it down. Everybody hauls their cotton someplace else now to be ginned.

Here's another one of my favorite harvest shots—members of our congregation picking the church field by hand. On the fourth Sunday of this month, we'll celebrate Harvest Day, which is our annual homecoming. We always hold it in October because the church was built when many members were farmers, and they could make an extra-generous contribution to the offering plate once the cotton was in. I love the way they all look like they're having such a good time together, even though they're working hard. And I love it when you can see and feel a connection between a piece of land and the people who love it.

Hank's Book of Cat Philosophy: #28

As the soft light of a morning sun

casts a golden glow upon the garden wall,

I pause for a moment of quiet reflection

and think to myself . . . 

I am one fine-looking cat.

Sunday Morning Serenity

Way back in the cobwebs of my high school memories, there was a moment in one particular class when the teacher said, "Don't worry about why you work the problem this way—just do it the way I showed you." Those instructions were my worst nightmare. Don't try to understand why. I never could learn anything that way. To have any hope of remembering enough information to pass the test (and I was very focused on passing the test:), I had to understand why not just what. Later, as a magazine writer, I was the same way—I guess all writers are. You can't tell the story until you fully understand it.

That's why I relate so well to the confusion and dismay of the disciples when Jesus calmed the stormy sea (Mark 4:35-41). They were out in a boat with Jesus when a terrible squall blew in, and the waves were crashing over, threatening to capsize them. All the while, Jesus was sleeping. When they woke him up, they were frightened and clearly aggravated: "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" Jesus calmed the storm, and here's what followed:

He said to his disciples,
"Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
They were terrified and asked each other,
"Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!" 

I just read a wonderful interpretation of this passage in Reverend Timothy Keller's The King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus:

"This picture goes to our hearts, because everyone who's ever tried to live a life of faith in this world has felt like this sometimes. Everything is going wrong, you're sinking, and God seems to be asleep, absent, or unaware. If you loved us, the disciples are saying, you wouldn't let us go through this. If you loved us, we wouldn't be about to sink. If you loved us, you would not be letting us endure deadly peril. Jesus calmed the storm, and then he responded to them. Did he say, I can understand how you felt? No, he asked, 'Why are you so afraid?' . . .

"Jesus's question to them has behind it this thought: Your premise is wrong. You should have known better. I do allow people I love to go through storms. You had no reason to panic. . . ."

Here's one of the powerful conclusions Reverend Keller draws from this event: "If you have a God great enough and powerful enough to be mad at because he doesn't stop your suffering, you also have a God who's great enough and powerful enough to have reasons you can't understand. You can't have it both ways." 

Just because I can't see the plan, that doesn't mean there isn't one. Just because I don't understand the reasons, that doesn't mean they aren't there. God doesn't always give us the answers in boldfaced type. But if you examine your own past, your own path, you can see that it was mapped out for the good—and you can trust that you'll have sufficient grace to get through whatever tests lie ahead—even those dreadful pop quizzes that take you completely by surprise.

 

Timothy Keller, The King's Cross: The Story of the World in the LIfe of Jesus (Dutton, 2011), pp. 53-54 

Katrina Sculptures

Right after Hurricane Katrina, one of my Mississippi friends told me how then-Governor Haley Barbour addressed the people of his state. He said something to the effect of "we've just got to hitch up our britches and go to work." In other words, "we've got this thing to deal with, so let's get to it." I've been amazed and inspired by the people on the Mississippi coast since that phenomenal storm. They still talk about Katrina as if it happened yesterday, but at the same time, they've been steadily moving forward, one small step at a time. Beautiful sculptures like this one, made from live oaks killed by the hurricane, dot the coast. We photographed this one in Bay St. Louis, a spirited little town that has fought hard to come back from the storm. I'll never forget what this place looked like before Katrina or what it looked like a few months after, when I was here to cover it for Southern Living. The entire coast looked like it had been bombed. I remember driving past a woman who was standing in her front yard, rake in hand, with a dazed expression on her face. Mountains of debris surrounded her and all she had was that rake, but she was clearing what she could. It's wonderful to see homes rebuilt and communities restored. It's good to see people smiling again. 

Sunday Morning Serenity

I am give out. That has to be one of the most dead-on accurate, wonderfully layered of all Southernisms. I know I've written about it before, but it's all I can think of this morning, so forgive me for repeating myself. I'm not just tired—I'm give out—as in spread way too thin, trying to do too much in too little time, agreeing to help with things I don't have time to help with . . . Finally, on Thursday of this week, I hit a wall. And I did what I always do in that state—I called my mother and said, "I just can't do all of this!!" [There was perhaps a touch of drama in my delivery.] To which my mother calmly replied, "Well, of course you can't, so stop trying."  (People think Oprah invented "learn to say no," but she actually got that from Mama:)

One-by-one I started taking things off my to-do list—not marking them off—taking them off. My good friend Jane, our church organist, is playing solo this morning because even preparing music and getting myself 25 miles down the highway to church was more than I could handle. Did you ever feel that way—just an overwhelming need to stop—to rest and be quiet and stop scheduling, arranging, coordinating, and preparing (work, supper, home projects, garden projects, volunteer projects, etc.)? Color me THERE.

As I sat on our deck before sunrise, listening to the night critters hand off noise-making duty to the morning shift, I was thinking of a song Jane and I played a week or two ago. It's called "Leave It There," from the African American Heritage Hymnal. This beautiful song, all about letting go of your burdens, was composed by Rev. Charles Tindley. I was curious about his background, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. Born in 1851, he's considered one of the fathers of American gospel music. His father was a slave, but his mother was free, so even though he himself was free, he grew up around slaves. As an adult, he had jobs carrying bricks and working as a janitor in a church he would later pastor. Even though he had no formal education, he learned Greek and Hebrew and passed the examination (with high scores) to become a Methodist Episcopal minister. He would eventually pastor a multiracial congregation of 10,000 in Philadelphia. I imagine someone who worked as hard as Reverend Tindley knew a thing or two about being "give out." But instead of whining to Mama as I did, he wrote this:

If the world from you withhold of its silver and its gold,
And you have to get along with meager fare,
Just remember in His Word how he feeds the little bird—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. 

If your body suffers pain and your health you can't regain,
And your soul is almost sinking in despair,
Jesus knows the pain you feel, He can save and He can heal—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

When your enemies assail and your heart begins to fail,
Don't forget that God in heaven answers prayer;
He will make a way for you, He will lead you safely through—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. 

[Image by Joy Zaehringer @ Freerangestock.com]