Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

This morning I stumbled onto a video by cellist Wendy Law, who played the same classical piece on three different cellos: one cost $5000, one cost $180,000, and the last one cost $1 million. She encouraged viewers to comment on whether they could tell a difference in the sound among the three instruments.

Between the first two cellos, I couldn’t hear much distinction in sound quality, but the better instrument looked easier to play, as if the cellist's fingers could effortlessly glide up and down the strings instead of wrestling with them, as she occasionally had to do on the cheaper cello. The third one—the million-dollar one—sounded better and looked easier to play. The refinement of the instrument freed the musician to express herself in away she couldn't with the other two.

What we’re given does affect what we have to share with the world; but what we’re willing to give of ourselves shapes it too. A cheap cello might be a bear to play, but a willing musician can coax something beautiful from it. Oftentimes, we can do a lot of good with a lot less than we think we need. And the difficulties we face will just make us appreciate the ease we enjoy, if and when we’re blessed with more.

This season of thanks has been like none others. But a quiet celebration has its own special rewards—namely, less stress and more gratitude. Can you even imagine how much more we’ll all appreciate this time next year, now that we know, beyond a doubt, what made it special all along? We'll never again take for granted the priceless gift of having our families together, under one roof, giving thanks.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever.
Psalm 136: 1, 26  

[Image by Freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts,
to which also you were called in one body;
and be thankful.

Colossians 3:15

Let the peace of God rule. Be thankful. If I can hold onto those two things alone, I can deal with anything. But sometimes I don’t.

I didn’t know until recently that there’s a psychological term for something I’ve done forever: “catastrophizing.” It means imagining that your situation is far worse than it is and/or imagining the absolute worst outcome possible. It’s a great way to make yourself miserable. And ungrateful.

Naming it has helped me fight it. Sometimes that’s all it takes: identifying your foe, spiritual or psychological or emotional . . . Many times, my foe is me. (Technically, “my foe is I” but that sounds hoity-toity.) I’m imagining the worst instead of trusting in The Best.

Let the peace of God rule.

I’m blessed to come from a family of grateful people—on both sides. They’re genuinely thankful for what they have. Actually, my hometown is like that. It’s a community of people who believe in gratitude and generosity. I hope I carry that with me. And I think when I’m ungrateful, it’s because I’m focusing on the few things I don’t have instead of the many things I’ve been given. Every new day is an incredible gift, when you think about it.

Be thankful.

I was looking for a song to add to this post and came back to one I’ve shared before: “Psalm 34” by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. I’m repeating it because as I listened to it again this morning, I found myself in a spirit of true worship, and I realized that’s something I’ve been missing. I can have quiet time at home. I can pray at home. But it’s hard to worship at home. Listening to this song somehow restored my sense of fellowship.

Let the peace of God rule. Be thankful.

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

A cool wind is blowing through the trees this morning. With the possible exception of ocean waves, I think that’s my favorite sound in all of nature—wind in the trees, be they pines or palms. Dave and I have been known to hurry onto the nearest porch when a storm’s coming so we can watch it roll in and listen to the sound of the wind (unless it takes a scary turn and sends us scurrying back inside to watch the Weather Channel). One summer we planted palms and banana plants in our back yard to make it sound like the beach when the wind blew.

Today, with the Story Shack's front door propped open to the rustling leaves outside, I looked up “wind” on BibleGateway and of course found lots of mentions. There’s plenty of seafaring in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. I haven't studied James carefully, but this passage struck me:

Look also at ships:
although they are so large
and are driven by fierce winds,
they are turned by a very small rudder
wherever the pilot desires. 
Even so the tongue is a little member
and boasts great things.

See how great a forest a little fire kindles!
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.
The tongue is so set among our members
that it defiles the whole body,
and sets on fire the course of nature;
and it is set on fire by hell. 
For every kind of beast and bird,
of reptile and creature of the sea,
is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 
But no man can tame the tongue. 
It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 
With it we bless our God and Father,
and with it we curse men,
who have been made in the similitude of God.
Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.
My brethren, these things ought not to be so. 
James 3: 4-10

Oh dear. James saw us coming. How true is that? How much trouble in the world comes from that one tiny part of the human body? It can bring blessings or curses. And it is indeed difficult to tame. But that’s the single greatest favor we could all do for ourselves and for each other right now—try to tame our tongues. Speak blessings and not curses. Use that tiny rudder to steer our ships toward a better course.

Behold, a king will reign in righteousness,
And princes will rule with justice.
A man will be as a hiding place from the wind,
And a cover from the tempest,
As rivers of water in a dry place,
As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
Isaiah 32:1-3

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

Anything in particular been on your mind this week? I feel like we all need a month at the beach to decompress. But we should probably check to see where the latest hurricane is before we head out.

Dave asked me why I keep yelling “LOCUSTS!” at the TV whenever more bad news or controversy is being reported. And I said, “Because that’s the only thing left. Just about everything else has hit us already.”

But on the upside, standing in line together to cast our votes made me feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. I didn’t see people screaming at each other. Nobody got in anybody’s face. I just saw our community, peacefully and patiently standing in line together, waiting to make our individual voices heard.

Our polling place is a church. (Maybe that’s why we’re all so well-behaved:) And the chief crowd-wrangler is a man named Bill who operates in a spirit of joy and friendship, asking if we could kindly shift the line to the left to make more room, thanking us for cooperating, helping elderly voters back to their cars, and reminding us to be thankful in all things. I love Bill. We all do. He's proof that so much of the ugliness hurled at us in a daily tidal wave on our news outlets of choice just might be the exception and not the rule.  

That's definitely true of the year we're wading through together—2020 has been the exception, not the rule, and it’s important to remember that so we don’t despair. COVID is a very real threat; if you don’t believe that, I’d encourage you to visit Johns Hopkins University’s COVID dashboard and see what’s happening around the world. But the progress being made in treatment and the research moving us toward a vaccine are also real. Our healthcare army is filled with mighty warriors and the fight won't last forever.

The political climate we’ve been navigating and daily absorbing has been every bit as toxic as any virus. I’m so weary of the “us against them” nonsense. But we’re responsible for it, at least in part, because we’ve lost the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. Did you know that the Associated Press has strict guidelines against muddying the two, rules that every journalism student in America has to learn from the very beginning? "In my day" (geezer alert), we weren’t allowed to say, “According to John Doe” because “according to” implies doubt. Instead, we were schooled to say “John Doe said.” No interpretation. Just the facts, ma’am.

When I went to BibleGateway this morning, this was the featured Scripture passage:

And if it seem evil unto you
to serve the Lord,
choose you this day
whom ye will serve;
whether the gods which your fathers
served that were on the other side of the flood,
or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land ye dwell:
but as for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.
Joshua 24:15

False gods change over the centuries. We aren’t in much danger of being led astray by the Amorites, but we can just as easily head down a treacherous path by following misinformation, by believing without question and reposting anything that begins with “I heard.”

What if all the conspiracy theories floating around the internet are false? What if there is no diabolical plan lurking beneath the surface—only ordinary people, like you, who are completely well intentioned but just happen to disagree with you on some issues you both consider very important—nothing dark or ominous, just an honest difference of opinion? Would that change the way we all face the day?

We need to be seekers of truth and reconciliation. We need to remember how to stand as a community, despite our differences. We need more Bills.

Sunday Morning Serenity

 

It doesn’t take a lot to do a lot. A single candle can bring enough light to break through the scary unknown of a dark room. It may not illuminate the whole space, but it’ll give you enough visibility to take one step and then another.

I think we’re all going through a time that forces us to do that—take one step and then another—because there are too many unknowns for big strides. It’s pretty dark out there, and we don’t have a flashlight. We have a candle. But that can be enough. We just have to take each day in small steps instead of giant leaps.

That’s hard when you’re coping with sorrow and loss and disappointment. You want to move past them. You want to see beyond them. Doing that is unusually difficult right now, and we have to give our situation its due. The emotional tidal wave that might hit you from time to time is not just your imagination. It’s not all in your head. We’re living through some extraordinary circumstances that can make all of us feel overwhelmed and alone, but we really aren’t. We just need to remind ourselves of that every day and find ways to show the people we care about—and total strangers that we pass in the grocery store—that they aren’t alone either.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined.
Isaiah 9:2

Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works
and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,
who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

Yesterday, I got to enjoy a simple pleasure that has been mine since childhood: I watched a cotton picker roll through the red dirt and begin the fall harvest season. When I was a kid, there was no greater adventure than riding on the pickers with my uncles—now run by my cousins—or spending an afternoon tumbling around a wagonload of cotton.There's something beautiful, to me, in generations of family stewardship of those fields.

I'll be honest here—I need moments like that because right now, the ugliness of The Big Bad World is just too much. I can't listen to any more hate-spewing. Forget being compassionate or tolerant—we aren't even civil most of the time. It's overwhelming because, other than controlling my own actions and voting my conscience, there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it. 

So what can I do? Everything possible to make MY world—my personal world—a safe and comforting place—making time for the people I care about, giving more of myself to them and wasting less energy stressing over things I can't control or change. I can wrap up in a blanket and sip my morning coffee on our deck. I can sleep with my windows open. I can relish time with the two little boys next door who delight in sneaking out of their yard and invading the Story Shack (which now has alphabet magnets on the metal back door and a treat basket by the front door—yes, I'm a total pushover). I can be so thankful for Dave and my parents and our families and friends. I can pray for a more peaceful, healthy, stable future for all of us. And before the cotton harvest is over, I might even steal a ride on that big machine. I might watch it gather clouds of white from a field of red dirt and be reminded that the end of one season promises the beginning of another.

 

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

I woke up this morning with nothing to say, so I gave myself a present and didn’t try. Instead I sat on the porch of the Story Shack, coffee cup in hand, and felt the rainy mist blow on my face. I don’t think Estee Lauder sells anything that makes your face feel the way rain does. Or as one of my favorite Nanci Griffith songs puts it,  Oh, I wish it would rain; it’s gonna wash my face clean; I wanna find some dark cloud to hide in here . . .

After my rain spa, I wrapped up in a favorite throw my aunt gave me and took a stroll around the yard. It’s amazing what has been going on out there while I had my head buried in a computer.

My camelia bush is blooming. So is the rosemary. At the same time, leaves are beginning to turn (they might be on weeds, but they're still pretty), and the spiders have been having a field day making webs. They’ve done it all with no help from me because I’ve made no time for them. By the end of my stroll, I was breathing differently. And I realized that sometimes, the little slices of life that we think we have no time for are the very ones that will give us the peace we need—if we let them.

Thankful this morning for peaceful stillness and rain splashing on rocks and wind in the trees and green turning to gold.

But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; 
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you. 
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this? 
In his hand is the life of every creature
and the breath of all mankind.
Job 12:7-10

Sunday Morning Serenity

We’re about to go through annual evaluations at work, and that has my mind drifting in a corporate direction this morning.

Nobody has ever suggested that I have a head for business—or even a passing interest, for that matter. Math makes me queasy. I wouldn’t know how to read a profit and loss statement if Cheeto’s Fancy Feast depended on it. But I’ve spent most of my adult life in a corporation, and even an English major picks up a little something along the way.

What I’ve come to believe is this: No matter how many mission statements or vision statements or five-year plans or ten-year plans they adopt, corporations all have the same three basic options: expand, contract, or stand still. And since nobody wants to be perceived as standing still, they’re generally trying to expand (“diversify to broaden our revenue base”) or contract (“focus on our core business and spin off units that don’t play to our strengths”).

The last one is what COVID has forced all of us to do: focus on our “core business.” Not only are we focusing on it, but some of us are just now identifying our core business, which maybe got lost in the swirl years ago.

Example: Daddy asked me if I would try to find the sheet music to a song he likes and play it on the piano for him. I found it and packed it up with lots of other music he likes: “Stardust,” “Mood Indigo,” “Harlem Nocturne,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. . . We had a little mini concert in my parents’ living room yesterday (with a lot of missed notes because I’m so blooming rusty). My mother asked me, “Do you ever sit down at your piano and just play for your own enjoyment?” My answer was kind of sad: “Not any more.”

 I’ve been playing the piano since I was seven, and I’ve never, ever enjoyed “performing.” What I loved was playing for people to sing—choirs, congregations, my family . . . That’s hard to do right now. But Mama reminded me that music has always been part of my core, and I shouldn't abandon it entirely just because I can't enjoy it the way I want to right now.

The same is true of the people we love and the faith we hold to. Maybe we can't interact with them the way we normally would, but they're absolutely part of our core, and we need to maintain those ties that nurture and strengthen us through difficult times. (Conversely, who wore what on the red carpet doesn't seem to matter so much these days, does it? Spinning off.)

I know I’ve quoted this Scripture before, but it’s one of my favorite passages, and it’s all about focusing on the core:

Finally, brethren,
whatever things are true,
whatever things are noble,
whatever things are just,
whatever things are pure,
whatever things are lovely,
whatever things are of good report,
if there is any virtue
and if there is anything praiseworthy—
meditate on these things.
Philippians 4:8

[Image by Eric Yuen @ Freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

I was looking up some Bible verses this morning and stumbled onto a passage that contained “and your heart will rejoice.” I’ve been thinking about it ever since because it goes deeper than laughter or happiness—your heart rejoicing.

I’ll be honest here—lately I’ve found it difficult to achieve any of the above, though Dave and I still manage to make each other laugh. Barney Fife still makes me laugh. And Daddy. But this whole year has been a doozy, and it has taken its toll. I’m dog-tired of 2020. Can I say that out loud? I think I just did. The other day, Mama and I were talking about all the people we miss spending time with, and I said, “I even miss my doctors.” Because I’ve only done telemed this year. And I really like my medical team. (If you think it takes a village to raise a child, wait till you’re pushing 60 and realize how many highly skilled medical professionals it takes to keep you going.)

But enough of my blah-blah. It’s very important, now more than ever, to laugh, to find joy every day. Reader’s Digest was onto something with that “best medicine” thing. Laughter really does have some healing power, I think. And while it might not be actual joy, laughter can help lead you there. Those daily joys are reminders of the everlasting kind:

Therefore you now have sorrow;
but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice,
and your joy no one will take from you.
John 16:22

[Image by Chance Agrella @ Freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

There’s a cool wind blowing in the trees this morning—what my mother calls “a little touch of fall in the air.” The heat of another summer is passing, the chilly winds of harvest season are here, at least in the morning.

As the weather cools, we’re coming to the end of the strangest, most turbulent year in my adult memory, though I have vague childhood recall of the 1960s. And there’s some comfort for me in the changing season, in the constants of nature. No matter what turmoil humans create, nature will continue on its course.

Harvest season will always remind me of my Uncle Bud, whom we lost recently. I won’t write much about him here because he was a very private person, and I don’t think he would appreciate being put on “that computer.”  (I can see him shaking his head as I type.) But I will say that my cousins and I had a great example, in Uncle Bud, and continue to have a great one in Uncle Chick—brothers and cotton farmers—of stewardship, of respect for the land that sustains us and humble gratitude to God, who gives it to us.

There’s a special peace in the simple cycle of seeds in the ground, rain and sun from above, and red fields covered with clouds of cotton. It makes me think of a passage from John, when Christ teaches about stewardship of our spiritual landscape:

Jesus said to them, 
“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me,
and to finish His work. 
Do you not say,
‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’?
Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, 
for they are already white for harvest! 
And he who reaps receives wages,
and gathers fruit for eternal life,
that both he who sows and he who reaps
may rejoice together.
John 4: 34-36