Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

The word of the day is JUST.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot for the past two weeks because we hear it so much in the media these days. And here’s the thing about this small but powerful word: It can elevate humanity or diminish it.

First the elevated.

We're in the midst of an awakening, calling ourselves and challenging ourselves to rethink what is fair and just. Can we find a path to treating all people—not just the ones who look, sound, think, and believe like us—with justice and respect? We don’t all agree on what “just” looks like, but we’re at least talking about it, aspiring to it.

It might help to revisit the “just” that God calls us to:

Defend the poor and fatherless:
do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Psalm 82:3

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest,
whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report;
if there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise,
think on these things.
Phillippians 4:8

[Christ speaking to his disciples]:
A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another;
as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another.
John 13:34-35

 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty;
only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh,
but by love serve one another.
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this;
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Galatians 5:13-14

Loving each other as Christ loved us, which is to say, unconditionally and sacrificially—that goes way beyond the human definition of “just,” which we generally take to mean what we deserve as human beings, what we have a right to. Christ said give love even when it hasn’t been “earned.” Even when you don’t think it’s deserved. Give it freely. Put others before yourself.

It’s such a short command but such a high one: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

And now for the diminishing “just.”

It's an all too human one, I think, because it's a way of keeping a very scary contagion at arm's length: It’s just the elderly. It’s just people with other health problems. It’s just poor people without good doctors. It’s just the deaths we need to pay attention to. 

Most of us could name plenty of elderly friends and family we aren't ready to give up, people who have lived long and rich lives, with still more to give, more life to enjoy, and plenty of wisdom to share. We know young people with preexisting health conditions. We have middle-aged friends and family who are otherwise healthy except for one manageable chronic issue. We have sense enough to know that struggling communities deserve our help, not our scorn.

I don’t shock that easily any more. None of us do, given the barrage of media coming at us every day, all day long, but “just the deaths” shocks me every time I see it.

“The deaths” aren’t numbers, they’re people—somebody’s mother, father, son or daughter, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, or grandparent. Each one of them represents a family that will never be the same.

Health care workers and first responders aren’t risking their lives and the health of their families for the dead, but for the living—to try and keep them that way. And in the process, some of them become one of “the deaths.”

Next time you hear or read “the deaths,” replace it in your mind with “beloved family members tragically lost.”

JUST.

My prayer, this Sunday morning, is that we can embrace “whatsoever things" are honest, just, pure, and lovely—God’s “just”—and banish the other from our hearts and our vocabulary. We're called to love and never diminish each other, now more than ever.

Sunday Morning Serenity

Last week, this passage from Isaiah was a “verse of the day” on Biblegateway.com:

But those who wait on the Lord 
Shall renew their strength; 
They shall mount up with wings like eagles, 
They shall run and not be weary, 
They shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31

I’ve read that verse before, but this time I zeroed in on the first few words: “those who wait on the Lord.”

It doesn’t say “those who seek the Lord” but those who wait on Him. I’ve thought about that all week, as we admitted Daddy to the hospital and waited for doctors to decide on his best plan of care while we prayed for God’s guidance and healing. I’ve thought about it as we’ve all waited to see what will happen next with the pandemic we’re all living in and with; as we’ve waited for protest to transform into positive, lasting change.

Wait on the Lord.

Waiting is not easy for me. Ask my very patient husband. He says my patience is selective: I can spend two weeks working on the same paragraph in a book manuscript, but don’t ask me to paint anything—a chair, a wall, a room—because I’ll get in such a hurry that I’ll make a big ole mess.

That’s the thing about rushing into anything. It often ends in a big ole mess.

Answers don’t always come the minute we think they should. And sometimes the smartest action to take is none at all.

Wait on the Lord.

Sunday Morning Serenity

Yesterday, I deep-cleaned. Not my house—I haven’t gone completely off the deep end—but the Story Shack.

I must’ve vacuumed up enough Cheeto hair to weave an area rug. Stickie notes and scraps of paper bearing outdated reminders were all over my desk. Now they’re gone. Dust everywhere. Gone. Heinous floor. Vacuumed and twice-Swiffered. Cozy throw was fragrant and not in a good way. Now it smells like Tide. Trash emptied. Dehumidifier vents cleaned with Windex and a Q-tip. Cheeto’s water bowl freshened up. New hand vac and my favorite gardenia candles on order.

Apparently, I had been living that “nose blind” commercial. It’s like I just woke up all of a sudden, looked around, and made like Bette Davis: “What a dump.”

I had the same response when I looked in the mirror. Y’all. How did this happen? I used to have a waist, I really did. I’ve got pictures to prove it. After months of staying close to home and ordering groceries on the internet and not going to the hair salon . . . Yikes. When I finally made it back to my friend Kim’s salon, my hair was way down my back, three different colors (I tried the at-home thing), and about that many textures—flat on top, frizzy on bottom, halfway decent in the middle. At least now I have good hair. The waist? Well, I’ve started walking, mask in hand in case I encounter anybody who won’t distance.

I live in skorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. Except for my wedding rings and another ring Mama gave me, I don’t wear jewelry any more. I haven’t been to the nail salon since March. Suddenly, I’m listening to Bob Dylan and telling Dave we need to grow our own vegetables and keep livestock in the back yard. What’s next—tie-dye and macrame?

If you’ve been cloistered like we have, are you amazed by how much stuff you’ve always done to present yourself to other people? I’ve always loved jewelry—I mean seriously loved it. But now I don’t wear it. Why is that? It doesn’t look or feel any different just because no one will see it but Dave and me. Same with shoes. Ask any of my loved ones and they will tell you: I have always been a shoe girl. With one or two exceptions, I haven’t worn anything but flip-flops since the weather got warm. I have no idea why.

Part of it is just the time factor. I’m working from home four days a week, trying to meet a September book deadline, and helping to keep groceries and necessities stocked without getting around people because this virus is bad in our city and county. But I think there’s more to it than that.

I feel myself “divesting.” Or maybe a better word is shedding—throwing off what I don’t need so there’s more time for what I do. I may not put on makeup everyday, but I do take time away from work to have lunch with Dave and break up our day together. Maybe I’m giving the jewelry a rest, but I try to water the few containers we planted because they bring us joy. I cook more of our suppers because Dave has been doing that for, oh, a couple of years now, and I figure he could use a break. (However, I do remind him from time to time that I would not object to spending money on a grill to replace the one we wore out. I do miss having the husband at the grill.)

I think there’s some shedding going on out there in the Big World, too—trying to throw off old, negative ideas and move forward, leaving room only for what’s right and just and true.

And on a personal level, I'm working to clean house, to throw out whatever serves no purpose and never belonged there in the first place, and welcome the fresh air.

Sunday Morning Serenity

I read somewhere that there’s a shortage of birdseed now. Apparently, stress and confinement have pushed many of us from Netflix and board games to the hard stuff: birding. Which means Mama is way ahead of the curve because she has been feeding and watching birds for decades.

When I visit my parents on their deck, we have to stop talking and be very still whenever we’re visited by the mother wren who has a nest in an ornamental birdhouse on a bookcase out there. She has come to feed her babies and doesn’t like noise or sudden movement. So MY “mama bird” instructs us to be very still and quiet so that the baby birds can be properly fed.

My parents are personally acquainted with all the wildlife in their backyard, from “that old crow” who comes to eat the leftover biscuits they scatter on the banister to the lizard who lives behind their outdoor thermometer. There’s even a wasp on the step railing who “comes here all the time.”

Both of my parents have always found solace in nature. My childhood was filled with trips to a local lake to fish (I never liked to fish but I liked the lake) and long walks in the woods, where there were muscadines to eat and creeks to wade.

On my worst days, when the Big World seems unfixable, the pain and grief insurmountable, I find comfort in nature. Right now, both doors of the Story Shack are open to the birds calling. I’m looking out at a towering mimosa—a “trash tree” by Dave’s estimation, but I think it’s pretty. I’m watching a chipmunk stand on a paper plate and eat Cheeto’s leftovers, which I put out on the Story Shack porch specifically for the chipmunk. (Like mother, like daughter.)

The natural world God gave us is such a beautiful place. Humans added the ugliness. I have hope that we can subtract it, hope that comes, in part, from watching my mother respect the needs of all other mothers—even the ones with feathers—to love and nurture their children, to give them strength for the world outside. I’m going to follow her lead.

[Image by Chance Agrella @ freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

This weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery. He spearheaded the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and he wrote a book called Just Mercy that was made into a movie.

When I interviewed him for Southern Living, the new museum and national memorial had received tons of media attention and an overwhelming visitor response—so much that they were scrambling to hire more staff. I didn’t know if he’d give me 10 minutes or 30 because his time was in such high demand. As it turned out, he patiently answered all my questions, even though he probably had a long line of journalists and city leaders and staff waiting to talk to him.

One of the things I remember most was what he said about narrative—specifically the narratives we create about each other. How we treat people has as much to do with what we believe or assume about them as what they actually do and say. So much of racism or any other form of prejudice starts with faulty narratives we create or accept. I’m not at all proud to admit that I’ve held some of my own narratives up to the light and found them to be false and in need of revision.

And there's the ray of hope. The end of a narrative isn’t predetermined. We can change it.

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

 

The late Alabama native Eugene Sledge wrote what's considered one of the most powerful memoirs of war, With the Old Guard: At Peliliu and Okinawa, the basis for The Pacific series. Parts of the book are very hard to read. They make you want to look away from the horrors of war. At the same time, it's the most moving account of camaraderie I've ever read, as soldiers who are put in unbearable and sometimes pointless circumstances have no one but each other to count on.

Sledge became a professor at Montevallo after the war. But his experience in the Pacific stayed with him throughout his life. I listened to every interview with him that I could find, and one of the things he talked about was how difficult it was to hear Americans complain about their lives after he came home, after all he had seen. He could marvel at something as simple as dry socks.

There’s so much noise in America right now, much of it mean and hateful and selfish. I don’t believe generations of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines fought and died so we could scream at each other. I just don't. And yes, I do believe in freedom of speech. But I also believe in listening and thinking and considering, in agreeing or respectfully disagreeing and advancing together. We’re better than this. Or at least, we should be.

We owe it to them.

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

Look who came back.

Years ago, I planted this pretty orange vine to climb up the frame for a swing Daddy hung for me before I had the Story Shack. If memory serves, the vine was a gift from a gardening friend, and the swing was built by a man Daddy worked with. I can’t remember what happened to it—I think a storm took it out a long time ago. And then we built the Shack and I’ve let the “natural area” on one side of it creep around toward the front.  I had forgotten all about the vine until it reappeared through a tangle of shrubs and trees and miscellaneous wild stuff that a normal person would clear away. But I enjoy feeling like I’m in the woods, and so far the neighbors haven’t complained.

I admire the vine’s resilience. And I appreciate any voluntary show of beauty in our yard, which has fallen by the wayside yet again as I try to work and meet book deadlines and turn our kitchen into a grocery triage area, where everything gets sanitized.

There’s something hopeful about a flower coming back. When you see daffodils or day lilies blooming at an old home place, don’t you find yourself hoping that maybe this now-deserted piece of ground isn’t quite done, that one of these days another family will make a home there and kids will once again hang a rope swing from the big tree out front?

Last week I made a nursery run for Mama, who had decided there just wouldn’t be any gardening for her this summer. But we both knew better. Gardening feeds her soul in a way that nothing else does. She said she really did need a few ferns for hanging baskets—not because she wanted to dress up her back deck but because a bird who had made a nest in one last year had been flitting around in search of family housing. Mama’s got her back.

The news and the internet can be so depressing right now. We have to hold onto things that aren’t. Like flowers that come back to the places where they're needed and a mama bird relieved to find the comfort of a Boston fern.

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

Southern Living put together a gallery of “Mama quotes” to share on Mother’s Day, asking members of the staff to share wisdom from our mothers. (If you’re reading this on Facebook, you can see that gallery below this post.)

I chose “sometimes you’ve just gotta back your ears”—Mama Nannette’s way of saying you have to buck up, quit your whining, and do something that’s hard, something you really don’t want to do, maybe even something that’s painful.

My mother’s no-nonsense perseverance is a quality I’ve tried to develop. I’ve got the perseverance down, but it’s usually accompanied by some nonsense (whining and hand-wringing).

You would think that somebody like Mama, who allows herself no self-pity, would be less than sympathetic toward other people, but just the opposite is true. My mother feels and cares very deeply for other people, especially those in need.

And hers is an active concern. She has never been one to say “bless their hearts” and go back to her book or her TV show. Her “bless their hearts” are always accompanied by a donation or a covered dish or a thoughtful handmade gift—and prayer, always prayer.

Two of her favorite songs—maybe her most favorite—are “Blessed Assurance” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” (Aside: I have always suspected that my sweet Baptist mama has a subversive side, as she listened to Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Simon & Garfunkel back in the sixties and seventies.) I learned to play “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for her when I was taking piano lessons. And if we were having church today, I’d make sure and play “Blessed Assurance.”

Mama taught me the blessed assurance of faith. And my goodness—I can’t even count the times she has bridged those troubled waters in my life.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama! I love you.

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

This morning I read a Facebook post from a friend who has been pushed to her limit with sickness and sadness, and it reminded me of an especially hard time in my own life. I guess I’m hoping it might help someone out there if I share this, so here goes.

If you've been kind (and patient) enough to follow my blog for a while, you know about one of the single greatest losses in my life. I was young when I lost a dear sister-friend to cancer. Nothing about her illness or death made any sense to me then. If I’m honest, it still doesn’t, nearly 30 years later. But I’ve learned to carry that loss and cherish her memory in a way that I couldn’t in those early days. Back then, all I could do was cry—and cry out—in sorrow and confusion and anger and every other emotion I could conjure up. Why am I still here? Why is she not? Why do good people suffer? Why, why, why?

I still wrestle with those questions. But I’ve made a fractured peace with them.

It happened in a very old Catholic church in downtown Birmingham. I was sitting there alone on a Sunday morning because it had become impossible for me to sit through a service in the Baptist church. Baptists want you to tell them why you’re hurting so they can gather around you and love on you. It’s one of the reasons I love the church. But I flat-out couldn’t face it back then. I was “between churches” at the time and congregation-hopping, with no church family. Let total strangers start singing “Victory in Jesus”—which my friend made me play for her on her wedding day to calm her nerves—and I would weep openly right there in the middle of their service. I remember one kind church lady looking at me and asking, “Are you all right?” I didn’t even try to fake it. “No, I’m not,” I said. And then I hurried out of that sanctuary and fled to the privacy of my apartment. 

It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t just grappling with grief. I was grappling with doubt. I couldn’t understand why this had happened. And if I couldn’t do that, then I couldn’t go to church, could I? As long as I was questioning and feeling forsaken, then I didn’t belong in church, did I?

That was my frame of mind—and heart—when I walked into a downtown mass one Sunday morning and took a seat near the back of the church. I had found a balm in Catholic services—the opposite of Baptist worship, with their ritual and serenity. I didn’t always understand what was happening, which made the worship experience less heart-wrenching somehow. There was no danger of the choir bursting into “Because He Lives.” And while I wasn't quite sure what I was doing there, I found some peace in it somehow.

On this particular Sunday, I found myself studying the Stations of the Cross—fourteen images tracing the end of Christ’s time on earth, from condemnation to crucifixion and the tomb—lining the walls of the church. And I remembered the scripture from the Gospel of Matthew:

“And about the ninth hour
Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying,
Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? that is to say,
My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?”
Matthew 27:46

If Christ, God’s only son, could feel forsaken and alone, then surely God understands when we, as imperfect humans, feel that way. It’s not a sign of failure to admit we’re overwhelmed. It’s a sign of our humanity.

When we’re at our weakest, that’s when we need God most. We don’t have to “fix ourselves” before we come to Him. We can always “approach God's throne of grace with confidence,” knowing we are loved, even when we believe we have nothing left to give. Instead of feeling defeated by our own emptiness, we can ask God to fill us—just as we are.

For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way,
just as we are—yet he did not sin.
Let us then
approach God’s throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:15-16

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

I feel like we’re all living through a very big moment—not just in our own lives but in the lives of our communities, our country, our world, our planet. It’s a lot to take in. And lately I've worried as much about what the virus is making us do to each other as the damage it’s directly inflicting.

Here's the thing. We've got our political and ideological differences, but the virus doesn't. It couldn’t care less whether you lean to the left or the right, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, Socialist or Communist, prince or preacher. It doesn’t care what price you pay—financial, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. Shelter in place to protect your family’s health and risk your business? Virus doesn’t care. Go back to work to save your business, and end up exposing yourself and infecting the people you love? Virus doesn’t care. It just wants to multiply. Plain and simple.

Our more optimistic inclinations tell us the pandemic can’t possibly be this bad, this serious. Maybe if we all just act normal and go back to work it will go away?

But it is this bad. It is this serious. And it won’t just go away. We have to fight it off. Together.

I just read an article about a new book by Timothy Keller and John Inazu called Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference. Here’s a quote from an interview with the authors, which I found on biblegateway.com:

“. . . we can tolerate each other—enduring the beliefs and practices we do not share—because of our gospel love. This doesn’t mean that we accept beliefs or practices that we don’t share. Instead, tolerance means distinguishing people from their ideas, and then seeking relationships with all who are made in God’s image. Our love of God overflows into love of neighbor. And this love of neighbor calls us to tolerance.”

Praying for tolerance, kindness, compassion, and understanding this Sunday morning. That's how we'll all "get over."