Notes From Toad Hall

Take the Long Way Home

2009-08-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

[Notes from Toad Hall, Main Essay - Summer Into Fall 2009]
I can't help but think that some stories exist to help us sort out human spiritual experience, and even though this one is about horses, for heaven sake, it seems to have a metanarrative twist. There is much about God and Scripture and life that remains a complete mystery to me, and yet I believe in God as my Helper, and that only He can help us withstand the vagaries of life and death and draw a path through incomprehensible adversity…

Up north where I grew up and where Mom lives on an acreage next to Dallas, my youngest brother, you can see his small herd of horses ranging across the pastures. They are visible from almost any window in the house; they graze, roll, freak themselves out over who knows what from time to time flagging their tails and galloping to the end of the field and back again.

One night last summer a neighbor's stallion sniffed the air and found it ripe with the scent of a particular mare. Intoxicated and following his nose, he jumped the fence, ran a great distance and broke through another fence to be with the mare that called him out of celibacy.

The next morning Dallas found them together. From his point of view it surely wasn't going to be a planned pregnancy if that was the result. He called the owner who decided his stud needed to be gelded. Dallas knows how to do that…a skill passed down from father to father for several generations. However, the procedure was complicated because the owner had never handled this horse, not so much as laid a rope across his back. He was three years old and apparently only around for his handsome looks. So the men waited to catch him until he was engrossed with the mare, then he was roped and dropped. In the wild struggle that followed the stallion gashed his head against a post in the corral. As others held him down, hog-tied and haltered, Dallas cut the offending organs, poured on disinfectant and he rose with blood running down his flanks. That part is normal and inevitable in the process of gelding. Wearing a halter and lead for the first time in his life, snubbed to the back of a pickup, he learned to walk with it, following it all the long way home.

Not long ago, about a year after his trip to the mare, the now gelding escaped his pasture again, just for the joy of it I guess, no sex luring him this time. His owner was a habitually impatient kind of guy with everything and everyone including his wife. Inconvenienced and in a rage, he shot the horse with a rifle in the driveway. Just like that. His wife called Dallas, crying. But what could he do? Sheriff responsibilities don't cover such things though he felt badly.

This story doesn't transition perfectly to application for obviously the horse didn't know he would be captured, wounded, and eventually shot. Unlike Jesus who knew for sure what was going to happen to him and why. During the last two weeks of His life Luke records Him saying: "We're going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him." The predictions were so appalling, it must have seemed like gobble-de-gook to the disciples and it looks as if they dismissed it at the time. But it wasn't hormones or delusions or jihad that motivated him; it was getting to us.

The long way that took Jesus through incomprehensible adversity has became our path home, our redemption. As we follow Him we are led through our own adversities and could easily be tempted to think they're meaningless.

Marva Dawn reminds me that their purpose is to "knit us to Christ and the grace of his passion. Jesus bears our suffering not only for us, but with us." (Being Well When We're Ill, Marva Dawn, 2008, Augsburg Books) Even if we don't feel the presence of God, He enfolds us nonetheless. I try to imagine how this is demonstrated; where do we see him carrying our sorrows whether we speak of it personally or in the larger context of the global church? Sometimes the answer stuns when we hear things like this report from a North Korean Christian who writes that recently five women from his neighborhood were publicly executed for the "crime" of trying to survive by looking for food. He courageously writes: "Nevertheless we are not afraid to die." ("Church Around the World" July, 2009) We know that only Christ can bear such suffering, and though we can't feel it or see how, he can turn it to glory.

Infected with Glory

In time it became clear that the mare was going to foal as a result of her tryst with the runaway stallion. Early this summer she gave birth to a little paint filly they named Ziva. When I was there visiting my mother in July, I watched her as she lay napping sprawled among the dandelions or gamboling around her mother full of life and curiosity. Whoever named her was thinking of a character from the television program NCIS. I don't know if they know Ziva is a Hebrew name that means radiant and bright. So if that lively baby means anything…well, I guess it's obvious.

To be born of God, to be his child still has power to surprise me. We're told that Jesus is "the radiance (the Ziva) of God's glory" (Hebrews 1:3) and by association we share some of his brightness because we "reflect the Lord's glory," and are "being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (II Corinthians 3:18) Reflecting Christ is quietly evident when we're simply doing or being what God created us for - it could be so ordinary we're apt to miss it. It might be the way we kiss a child, plant a garden, listen to a friend. When Joy Davidman, C.S. Lewis' wife, had a few sweet months of remission from cancer before her death, it was simple delights she loved best like sitting in the garden discussing books with Jack. She writes in a letter that she took "positive pleasure in making beds and clearing tables." - an interesting transition from her earlier years when she complained bitterly about the mundane. Even while Joy was unable to walk and care for herself, there was something about her ordinary self, her essential, intrinsic self that reflected a kind of glory. It caused Lewis to write: "We have much gaiety and even some happiness. Indeed, the situation is not easy to describe. My heart is breaking and I was never so happy before: at any rate there is more in life than I knew about." (Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman, 2009, Eerdmans)

Until Then
(From my journal. A date in July.)

Am home in Rochester now. Glad to be. Very heavy-lidded. Making self stay up. Denis is in Knoxville tonight consulting with a group who'd like to do a film festival. I want him here now. Been visiting my mother and kids for a week. Mom's doing very well since Dad died in February. Have had plenty of blueberry pie, rhubarb cake, fried walleye. Hardly got enough of Paige and Anson. Paige-y turns four this week. Micah is carrying a third child, her breath a little shorter these days. I ate too much, slept too little, watched the horses in their emerald pasture, saw the jet stream send clouds flying past the sun to the edge of the world. At night I lay with my head to the north window, cold air flowing across my pillow, blankets tucked round, leopard frogs trilling past midnight. The silence is vast, replacing urban noise with its constant racket of traffic and air conditioners.

On Saturday, a strange encounter. My brother, Dallas, brought a visitor who'd stopped in to leave a donation for the little country cemetery nearby. He and Marijean keep the plot records and see about upkeep these days. Somehow it came up. This man, Shorty Doree, once lived in the county and remembered a plane crash from many years ago. He was twelve years old, playing outside with a friend on a hot August day when a small plane flew over their farm, too low. They heard a loud banging noise, then silence. Knowing something terrible had happened, they ran through the field and woods to see. They found the plane crashed in a grove of ash trees. The pilot was already out walking around dazed. The passenger, Keith Sorenson, was still in the cockpit, his head severely wounded, beginning to lose consciousness, with fuel from the ruptured tank pouring over him. They were the first ones on the scene.

Shorty began to cry remembering it even last Saturday. He said, "I had to leave. I couldn't look. I knew Keith. He was one of the good ones, not like some you know, he was a hero, everyone loved him…" Shorty mused that this man, Keith, had been married to a beautiful French woman. (Mom isn't French.) Dallas showed him a picture of her from back then. "That's HER!" he shouted. Then Dallas told him Keith was his mother's first husband and that she was right next door and would he like to meet her? So there we sat in the kitchen and they talked, he and my mother, about the crash and about my father who died that day when he was 23 years old, and I wasn't even born yet.

Mom thinks he may be in heaven. Sometimes she says she's sure of it. She wasn't knowing Jesus herself then…and Keith's family didn't either. But he was always well-liked, a good man. Things happened in the War, he didn't tell much, but he did say…no atheists in the foxhole. He insisted he and Mom go to the only church he knew though none of their friends went and the church was not even orthodox anymore. Still…the words of hymns, of Scripture can be Holy-Spirited… penetrating the heart even if spoken by the unbelieving in dying rituals… That evening I stayed back to quietly work on the next issue of Notes From Toad Hall while Mom and everyone else went to a church meeting. Didn't get far. Thoughts of family. How strangely we are woven together in streams of sorrow and love, comfort and uncertainty. God holds all these things. One day we rise again.

On A Theology of Leaving

In the busyness of daily living it's easy to forget that God insists that the rhythm of work and rest are necessary to human existence. When I came across this essay by Prof. David Nelson, I was pleased because he was on my favorite soapbox and being very eloquent. ("On Going Home at the End of the Day" from betweenthetimes.com) He helps sort out why it's important to shut out the lights and go home even when facing tasks that are unfinished or will never be finished. Nelson writes, "our theological reflection (in the sense of reflection upon God) should lead us to recognize that God himself has not chosen to accomplish everything in one day, one week, month or year. Not only does God's creative work occur over time, but His providential work of bringing all things to His good end occurs over millennia. Since God Himself does not accomplish all his purposes in one day, it seems odd that His people might fret, forsake rest, and live disordered lives to do what God Himself has chosen not to do. What God could do, He does not, and what we cannot do, we attempt to do, to our own detriment."

Just the other night we had some young (any one under 30 is almost a baby) friends for dinner and when they left late in the evening there was a bushel of dirty dishes left in the kitchen. Denis made us go to bed and deal with it the next day. That night I had the oddest dream bordering on nightmare. No one would ever mistake me for a mathematician, I don't even like numbers unless they have to do with how many chocolates are left in the box, but I dreamed I had the equation to life--all the symbols and numbers on one side equaled the answer on the other side, and I lost the answer! How weird. I spent the entire night trying to find it. I blame this on not doing the dishes the night before.

I know for many leaving what we do is more difficult and more serious, but then isn't it all the more necessary? (I'm not making a case for laziness.) Our friends who run an organic vegetable farm are never done. The weeds always grow, the animals never stop eating, there is always a crop that should be harvested, sorted, washed, boxed. People in ministry are always on call: how do you tell someone in crisis that you can't come? For others, say, who do research at Mayo or see patients, there is never enough time to update records, write grants or read all the journals. Many of us live with the pressure to never quit until we "put it to bed." That's a bit ironic when it is we ourselves who ought to be put to bed.

This rhythm of work and rest that Nelson writes about is rooted in creation and pre- supposes that what we do in an ordinary, everyday way is ordained and blessed by God, which applies to all sorts of vocations--not just religious or missionary callings. God not only grants us the freedom to do nothing visibly useful at times, he insists on it. He desires us to trust that our resting accomplishes his purposes even when closure looks way overdue and our path looks grim.

Dormant Not Dead

2009-04-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

[Notes From Toad Hall, Main Essay - Spring 2009]

Despite the fact that the highs are still below freezing and the ground seems desolate and dead, at night I day-dream falling asleep with The Gardener's Year by Karel Capek. A cheerful old book, quirky and a little ponderous. Perhaps I read about gardening in late winter compelled by the paradox of seasons - when strolling through the yard on a dark, frozen morning, there, right where you looked yesterday where there was nothing, you spy a small green wedge, like the tip of a sword pushing through granite. A miracle.

In fact, Capek writes: "The existence of gardeners who every year, in spite of these bad experiences with the weather, welcome and unveil the spring is therefore a testimony of the imperishable and miraculous optimism of the human race." I was planning to drift off with visions of crocus (pl. croci?) spronging through the earth, lilac buds swelling, bursting, and maples in their burgundy springtime haze before they dump tons of fuzzy flowers into our rain gutters and sidewalks. Hopes warm as the sun draws closer. What I need is resurrection. What I thought was dead is getting up. Jesus has pushed through winter, through the crucifixion and in two days Easter will follow….

I was deep into rarified thoughts when I heard a weird noise. Like a mouse-sized machine gun, rrrrrp. rrrr-rrrr. Denis looked very guilty. I heard it again and whipped back the covers, which created an extended salvo of ripping sheets caught in his hand.

"WHAT are you doing?" I wanted to blame him, since we'd only had these particular sheets for, maybe 18 months. True, I washed them fifty-two times a year and put the same back on the bed month after month, and okay, maybe I bleach them once in awhile, and also hang them in the sun for infrared rays to weaken the fibers, but still. How could the top hem be so rotten he accidentally ripped the whole thing off and how can I sleep with frayed threads tickling my nose and stray bits getting caught in my teeth? I tested the strength of the fabric on my side and easily poked my finger through like it was a rice wrapper. Denis tried another spot on his side and tore two more holes.

I bought those sheets at Penney's and they supposedly had a 350 thread count. So, how many threads do we need? I must have survived childhood on 10 threads. Now I don't know. Does every single thing we buy have to have built in obsolescence? Even sheets? We had the last set for years. Well, not exactly the very last. That was one Denis talked me into buying when we stood in the store debating color. Why would I trust him? He's a little color-blind. Really, he is. I reminded him, but then, I caved. They were kind of rotten yellow-brown. Probably called "Burnt Custard" or "Golden Landfill." Every night they made me nervous and even in the dark I knew I was sleeping in the wrong color. I ended up giving them to our youngest daughter who likes them and hopefully labels the color "Soft Pumpkin" or "Amber Waves." (This is what mothers do. Offload unwanted, impulsive purchases on nearest child. It makes us feel better.) I felt flawed and extravagant when I bought a new set even though they were on sale and a much nicer color, and that was the set that ripped.

The next day I flung aside my schedule and went out to find a new set of queen sheets. At least one good thing can be said about the present economy, all the retail stores are practically paying us to buy their stuff. I found one, really cheap. A good, peaceful color. I can read gardening books AND sleep soundly in Marina Bay Green 650 thread count. Imagine! Although they are the texture of tent canvas, they blend with the Harvest Moon color of our bedroom walls … at night I'm still dreaming of spring, wrapped in sheets of leaves, waiting, waiting.

Samwise Gamgee & Dr. Horrible

During the L'Abri conference in February where both Denis and I participate as speakers, I received news of my dad's death early that Saturday morning. He suffered much during the last few months of his life, and so his departure was that mixed blessing people speak of. He was 84, my mother's second husband, so my step-father--my father was someone I never knew--he was killed in a plane crash a few months before I was born. After me came five more children. It's been a comfort to me that some of my siblings who live near Mom have been helping, loving, keeping vigil with her and Dad these many weeks. Years, actually, as it was almost eight years ago when he had a stroke that disabled him and took away his ability to speak, though not his thinking.

Unaware of what it might mean to me during his plenary session at the conference, Denis threw me a heart line when he reminded us of Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings who, when he saw Gandalf after the last battle, asks in utter surprise and joy: "I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?" Then, Denis quoted Tim Keller (I think.) who said: "The answer of Christianity to that question is yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost." For my family who mourns this particular death, but for all who grieve, I pray God will give comfort. I look forward to that glorious time when Christ returns to regenerate and renew. Then perhaps, both my fathers will stand to bless me, my husband, my children, and grandchildren in a way they could not in this life.

Maybe it's just me. Well no, there might be a few out there. Like people who watch The Office, or laugh at Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. Each year after the L'Abri conference here in Rochester, the presenters gather for an informal Saturday night soup supper at the L'Abri house. Talking, debriefing, getting reacquainted with friends from all over the globe is fun but a little frustrating because we'd all like to say so much to each other, and there's so little time. Greg P., whose everyday life is a manager in Missouri's Fish and Game Department, gave several workshops this year on caring for the earth. He's pretty earthy himself, and funny, and in love with God's creation. He said the conversation around him was intense. It included a young philosopher, another fellow talking astrophysics, and another relating the topic to the work of Oscar Wilde. Greg said, "at one point I had to ask for a definition of the word epistemology, a word everyone really seemed to like. I think it means 'how we know what we know.' I'm still confused. We didn't study that in public school." He tried to lighten the weighty conversation a little by offering: "I've watched every episode of Gilligan's Island. My favorite was when the fish swallowed the radio…" (trail off) I don't know that he succeeded because after a beat of silence he couldn't tell if they admired or pitied him. It's a wonder how God does this--putting us in the same bed with such diversity? And that I get to see it? We love, respect, and sometimes get to laugh at ourselves, okay, and others--God's crazy quilt of people.

"You're my water, you're my wine…"[from Over The Rhine's “Drunkard's Prayer”] It was a special time to be able to stay on longer with my mother after the funeral. I love to be with her. She's doing so well and probably has more energy than I do. We think she grieved and accepted Dad's death over a span of many months before it happened. I don't have much experience in losing someone I know well, or sharing the grief with those who have. When I came back from my stay up north, Denis met me at the Minneapolis airport and I could have perched on his lap for hours I was so glad to see him. I posted on my blog, trying process a small piece of what is both ordinary--since we all must die--but also momentous when we lose a lifetime mate or friend:

Am home. Last night. Yesterday about five caught Marvin Window's small corporate plane (our son works for them) down to Minneapolis. Stared out the window at the frozen lakes, hundreds, thousands of them as we flew low through the waning day. Post funeral. Post family. Post so many people and cups of Folgers. Post helping write thankyous for memorial gifts. Post staring out Mom's living room windows across empty fields and snowy pastures. We drove home. Me talking nonstop. Like I was drugged, flying high. Telling everything that happened from the time he left on Friday morning. Couldn't stop. Couldn't edit. Thought of that unknown day when Denis and I leave this life. How will the one who remains carry on? How good is it to have someone who tolerates rough drafts? Or who brings a bowl of soup to the couch because you're too tired to get it yourself?

Reading Response

I'm slowly on my way through the Bible again…as always am freshly stricken (and I mean stricken, don't argue grammar with me) by something. This time that God is "the God of Jacob." So often repeated. Like he's not ashamed to be intimately connected with such a scammer. Such dishonesty. Jacob's pathological relationship with his wives and their maids makes me seethe a little. You can understand Leah's desire - being the unattractive and rejected wife even though she gave him son after son. You can understand Rachel's pain with infertility. But to endorse the competition for his love by having sex with their maids? What was he thinking? Whose problem did that heal? However. I've learned to love that name - the "God of Jacob" because if God is only God of those who are good and true and beautiful, then I am so screwed. And here's an interesting piece of justice for Leah: it was her son, Judah who became a "prince among men," the father of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings.

In my last issue I promised to publish a few responses from fellow de-railed Bible readers:

Thanks for the new copy of the Bible Reading Schedule for Slackers. My downloaded copy had a recipe for yeast waffles on the back and a lot of drips and tears (as in torn paper, not crying). It was time for a new one. --Mary S., Cadillac, MI.

I want to tell Margie what a delight her Toad Hall is and has been for many years. It is like sitting down for a cup of coffee with a long-time friend and having a chat...She makes a connection with my soul each issue. This time, the "Reading the Bible for Shirkers and Slackers" was just what I need...only I will fold the whole issue up in my Bible for the next 4 and a half years!! --Eugenia H., Amarillo, Texas

I especially liked Lynn's rant (my kind of person, you know?):

I am currently reading through the Bible…each time I do this, I am impressed by another facet of the Word. This time I am angry at the liturgical calendar. Each week, the church picks what they want to discuss either formally (Roman Catholic with its proscribed Old Testament, New Testament and Psalm for the day)or informally (Protestant). That means we can ignore what makes us uncomfortable like the rape of Dinah (which I never heard in church) or the vulgarity of Israel's sins in Ezekiel (Chapter 16 or 23:30). To ignore parts of the Bible leaves us with a truncated, emasculated Christianity, devoid of the grittiness and squalor of the real world. It makes it easy for others to dismiss the faith as the intellectual equivalent of the Care Bears. Read the whole thing and you will never see the Bible as "Pie in the Sky" again. There's another reason to read the whole Bible: Jeremiah and Ezekiel were such failures in their own eyes, and probably in the eyes of those around them (personally, I really disliked reading Ezekiel for years and would not have, if it weren't for checking it off on the list), yet who of all their contemporaries made more of a difference? --Lynn P., Lowville, NY.

Although I encourage reading the Bible, it's important to remember that any act of "devotion" or spiritual discipline can easily become a way to impress ourselves, others, or God. The fervor of our commitment can make us think that God loves us the more because of it, and we can become proud of how well we are doing, especially when compared to you, you slug. On the other hand, we are miserable when we fail to keep up. It can be depressing. God desires neither one. He knows our weaknesses and failures and perfection must wait for another time. Quite amazingly Jesus asserts that the Most High "is kind to the ungrateful and the evil." (Luke 6:35) So we are to be merciful to others, and I take it that we, too, are drenched in that mercy.

Shreds of Life

2008-10-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

[Notes from Toad Hall, Main Essay - Fall 2008]
Our three-year-old granddaughter, Paige, has a habit that got me thinking-- it's pretty common among kids--she sucks the index finger of her left hand while grasping the satiny edge of her baby blanket between the thumb and remaining fingers. Her right hand clutches another part of the ribbon edge in the exact place where she knows there is a hole in the binding and can slip her other thumb in and out. The blanket used to be lilac with a lavender satin binding. It's now faded to a sickly, gray color with stains and holes that would make a sensitive person gag. Even with all its disgusting strings and shreds hanging off, to her, it retains the mix of soft flannel and slippery satin she she needs to comfort herself.

When part of our family was together in June, I watched her, thinking what a metaphor for life--hanging on to the shreds, trying to find some comfort in the fragments of life. Towards the end of our stay at the cabin when everyone was ready to be done with vacation, Paige's daddy had to take her on his lap to give her a scolding about some things she does regularly. He talked to her at length about not going on the dock without a life jacket, not hitting her brother with a stick, or not walking in the water with her shoes on, I don't remember what all. I do remember, she was holding her blanky and sucking steadily. When he was done speaking she took her finger out of her mouth and asked: "You talkin' to me?"

Even while laughing I was struck by my adult ability to do the same thing. I favor hanging on to the shreds of life and sucking madly rather than listening to God. I can't believe how hard it is to find the exact combination of chocolate, books, coffee, not too much global news, a good sitcom, sleep, and controlled interactions with every significant-other in order to make my life pleasant. It's tough to pay attention to the ways God "talks" to me about the limits of my ability to "re-imagine" life. I can see myself barely lifting my eyes long enough to say, "You talkin' to me?"

Star Talk

We walk under the stars every night whether we notice them or not. What difference can they possibly make in this disparate world where refugees stream away from burned homes and someone sells me a sour batch of Ethiopian Yrgacheffe (get over it) that I paid good money for? Oddly enough, God can use the stars to "speak" to us and to offer some healing perspective when the world tempts us to distraction or despair. They are there to say, "Pay attention. I'm talking to you."

So it happened that this summer I reconsidered the stars and planets, in a pretty unscientific way, granted.

Did you see the moon in July and part of August? I hope you noticed. There was a bright star that followed the moon across the southern sky dwarfing even the city lights. The star was so close and unblinking, I almost thought it was a giant space station just a few miles off the cross on top of St. Mary's Hospital, moving steadily toward our back porch. It turned out to be the planet Jupiter, 365 million miles away, as close to earth as ever it can get. It gave me shivers, and I immediately thought: God!

You get the same feeling of observing some powerful, alien universe if you've ever camped in a far valley or forest and lain down at night under the sky or swam naked in a lake when the stars were reflected all around, and it felt like you were floating in space with nothing to tether you to the mother ship. It makes some grown persons cry because they get a notion of how small they are and how vast the universe.

Thinking along this misty trail, I was reminded of Abraham and the Milky Way. In Genesis God told Abraham that his "offspring would be as numerous as the stars." I wondered, how could Abraham believe such a thing when he was old and childless? Even now it just seems so over the top. Back then in about 2000 B.C. he would have looked up at night and seen the stars from the dark of the wilderness, a place where no one lived, a place of deep silence. Today there is nowhere on earth, and hasn't been for centuries, where the stars are so bright, or as many as Abraham saw them. With towns and cities and gazillions of bulbs generating waves of light energy across the atmosphere of the earth, there is no place on the planet free of light pollution.

So from this pristine place in the deep desert where he watched millions of stars light years away and saw the distant dust of galaxies that look like space fog to the naked eye, and as the constellations swung in myriads across his retinas, Abraham listened and believed God. He believed God meant what he said, and this impossible thing of having a baby with Sarah would come true, and that through him all people would be blessed because he would become the ancestral father of Jesus, who would gather us all into one family with countless brothers and sisters and bring us home.

So I looked at Jupiter, and the fact that I could say "God!" signals (at the least) I've taken my thumb out of my mouth long enough to get this: Thanks to Abraham, thanks to Christ, thanks to God. I am, I was, one of the stars Abraham saw. (Not literally. You know.)

And on one of those nights in August when the lights were so brilliantly on display I also remembered a piece of David's poetry and thought, yes, I do catch a tiny drift of what he meant when he wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament showeth his handiwork. Day after day uttereth speech; night after night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world….

and on it goes--Psalm 19. The rhythm of the old King James language seems right for these ancient words. Their power and mystery can lift the heart and eyes from dragging in the dirt. There is deep hope in knowing that this knowledge about creation is not exclusively imparted to some religious, white woman living in the USA. No, not at all. I look up with, perhaps, billions of others, whose language I don't begin to understand, and know that any of us, anywhere, can hear and see something of the glory of God in the stars.

This is not meant to disengage me from the world, but rather, to give courage, and to see it in such a way that I am calmed. I know that the God who made Jupiter reflect the sun at night also has a plan for a time yet to come when he says:

I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise… at that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home… (Zeph. 3:19, 20).

I can imagine a little bit of this just from how good it feels to be back home today, sitting in the sun on the back steps, eating a fresh tomato, and watching the bumble bees pollinate my coral bells. Zephaniah's words help cork my impatience while I wait for what seems like a long, long time to see what glory looks like. Jupiter helps the wait.

And, oh, by the way, two days before I'd thought of getting a pic of it, Micah had clipped the strings and sewn the rips on Paige's blanket.

Other Star Moments

I confess I like most of what Monty Python does even though I sometimes wonder what kind of twisted person laughs at their stuff. (Me?) Not to go into all that here, but they did a movie called The Meaning of Life, which has moments of, well, vulgarity, but also moments of great brilliance. It includes a song written by Eric Idle--“The Galaxy Song.” Here's one of many links where you can listen and read the lyrics: http://dingo.care2.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf.

I appreciate it because Idle makes paradox work. He asks this huge question about what is the meaning of life by forcing you to consider the solar system and the unimaginable statistics of star distance and size. When perspective is established and you are smiling at the swingy melody and rhyming lyrics he sticks it to you by offering no answer at all:

And remember when you're feeling very small and insecure How amazing and unlikely was your birth. And pray there's intelligent life somewhere up above, Cause there's bugger aught down here on earth.

Idle is right. Life is meaningless, not to mention frightening, if there isn't some higher intelligence running the cosmos. And if "It" is there, but doesn't give an Arby's French Dip about you, then there isn't much reason to live.

However, when I lie on the dock at a little lake in northern Wisconsin and watch the northern constellations that come out, my problem is not that I doubt God's existence, my trouble is why we suffer and what does God mean by it?

This past summer I've wondered why our neighbor brings his little boy with him when he makes drug deals outside my kitchen window, and why Chinese girls are purposely suspended in pre-menstrual childhood to make them gold-medal stars, and why I must endure my own little slice of pain and distress.

When God talks to Job about suffering he never explains why, instead he tells Job to look at creation, and he sounds pretty scary stern about it. Among his questions to Job: "Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades (The Seven Sisters)? Can you loose the cords of Orion?" (Job 38:31). No. And, no.

Still, this is an interesting moment when God joins Job on earth and looks up with him from a human's finite perspective. Think of it. From wherever God is, at any single point in the universe, or at all points at once, this configuration of stars could look like anything. What pattern do they form? It's only from earth that they look like "Seven Sisters." So to communicate with Job, God descends to earth, looks up, and calls it with the human eye. I love that.

Frederich Buechner reflects further on God's non-answer to Job about suffering:

Maybe the reason God doesn't explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs isn't an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the case of boils. Job would have his explanation.

And then what?

Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning. Carrying in his pocket straight from the horse's mouth a complete theological justification of his boils, he would still have to scratch and burn. God doesn't reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn't show why things are as they are. He shows his face. And Job says, "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee." Even covered with sores and ashes, he looks oddly like a man who has asked for a crust and been given the whole loaf. At least for the moment.

- Frederick Buechner in: Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC

The Point of Stars

I was surprised to see the new Christmas card our friend, Bonnie Liefer, designed this summer. We seemed to have been thinking along the same lines. Its subject is stars. (Her brochure is included in this issue of Notes.)

She says, "Twenty-three years ago, I looked out the window on a summer night in Colorado and I will never, ever forget what I saw. The sky was packed with stars. It was stunningly, achingly beautiful. I had never seen anything like it before and I've never seen anything like it since.

"Those stars are still there, even though I can't see them in Pittsburgh. In the same way, there is an unseen spiritual reality that lies behind everything, even though we can't see it. And behind that unseen world is Christ."

In a world that can wear us down, the stars can restore our hearts to a proper upright position, they can be a reference point of hope reminding us that Christ, who suffered as a human, is also the one who is "before all things and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17).

Happy Mother's Day

2008-07-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

[Notes from Toad Hall, Family Notes - Summer 2008]

This is my teenage mother at her high school graduation. She was still seventeen when I was born later that year, just a girl. . She’s now in her late seventies. I hope she doesn’t mind my saying so. She was with us the last four days, and I tried to get her to watch Juno, the postmodern teen pregnancy movie, to see if she drank a lot of gator-aid and threw up in the flower pots, but she wasn’t so interested.

I love when she comes. It gives her a change and I get to make sure she sleeps through the night without the adrenaline crush of going from dead sleep to heart-stopping hurry (she has to get up several times a night with Dad).

The past seven years her work has been taking care of him since a stroke paralyzed his left side and took away speech. But he can feed himself and think, but he’s mostly trapped inside himself. Mom has help, I have two brothers and a sister who live near. That’s so good. But her margin is narrowing and the time between needing a break grows shorter.

When she got on the plane, heading home yesterday afternoon, she was planning to stop at the supermarket, drive the remaining thirty-six miles to her house, make supper, and about 8:30 when they’re done working, two young women will show up for a weekly Bible study with her even though she lives seventeen miles from town. After, they eat a late supper together. They’re both single, one divorced, the other engaged. I said, why don’t you cancel this week? Give yourself a break, once. But she said no, the previous week she’d been sick and they really miss it. She also mentioned they usually stay until midnight or later. (If someone stays that late with me – I yawn repeatedly and start shutting out the lights.)

Although it’s obvious I have some ways to go, she taught me the Bible, too. And how to make pie crust, and take chances. Neither of us like sticky, sweet, sentimental cards unless it’s from someone under the age of ten or your own kid. So, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you.

Life is Short. Stay Awake For It

2008-07-03T09:08:00.001-07:00

[Notes From Toad Hall, Main Essay - Summer 2008)
I’m sure Darcy, manager of our neighborhood Caribou Coffee, has had enough of her company’s slogan. When we walked in she was slumped at a table pouring over shift schedules. Denis talked to her while I ordered from the twenty-two-year-old barista who leaned forward and whispered, “Darcy has worked for thirty-two days in a row, and today is her birthday. I’ve been teasing her she’s a quarter of a century old.” Meanwhile Darcy was telling Denis she finally had to fire three problem-employees. One of them had already threatened her. It made her sick to her stomach to do it, and she was going to have to work more hours in the meantime. A good day for her right now is when she can get off for a few hours and go home to nap. Stress is waking her at night and she’s just decided to keep a pad of paper by the bed so when she thinks of something she can write it down and leave it alone until morning. I’m going to ask her what she thinks about her young employees’ work ethic. Was there a common factor that caused them to fail?

Fifty Years

2008-07-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

[Notes From Toad Hall, Main Essay - Summer 2008]
Reading about the Jubilee in The Good Works Reader and thinking of the poor of this world and those who are poor and suffering in spirit. How we long for that year of liberation, which will take away everything that tears and breaks our lives, our earth! This is what an old Patristic named “Bede the Venerable” (672-735) had to say about the Jubilee:

In the law, the fiftieth year was ordered to be called [the year] of jubilee, that is, “forgiving” or “changed.” During it the people were to remain at rest from all work, the debts of all were to be canceled, slaves were to go free, [and] the year itself was to be more notable than other years because of its greater solemnities and divine praises. Therefore, by this number is rightly indicated that tranquility which provides the greatest peace. Then “the dead will rise and we shall be changed” [I Cor. 15:52] into glory. Then, when the labors and hardships of this age come to an end, and our debts, [that is] all our faults, have been forgiven, the entire people of the elect will rejoice eternal in the sole contemplation of the divine vision, and that most longed-for command of our Lord and Savior will be fulfilled: “Be still and see that I am God” [Ps. 46:10].

As quoted in The Good Works Reader by Thomas Oden. (p. 49)

The Working Difference

2008-07-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

[Notes from Toad Hall, Main Essay - Summer 2008)
Martha and Mary. Classic working women from the Bible. Single, too. For years whenever I’ve heard someone (mostly men, sorry) teach about them – Mary is such the darling. Martha is so-ooo flawed. WHO wouldn’t know sitting at Jesus’ feet is best, huh? Isn’t it obvious Martha should’ve been sitting there listening, too, where we ALL should be?

No, it’s not obvious. I like Martha. Mary annoys me. A lot of us need to be told it’s okay to ditch our agendas and get out of the office, or the kitchen, or the whatever. But we should be told nicely and not like we’re stupid for assuming someone needs to soak the barley and grate the cheese. Martha was stressed and her timing was off. But think about it, if Jesus, the maker of heaven and earth, was telling her things don’t need to be perfect or done right now, then without a doubt, it’s okay to abandon agenda in favor of sitting down and really being present with a person. When he made her do this, he put hospitality way away from anything that smacks of duty or show. But it’s far more than this. Jesus releases her from the cultural definition of what made a woman successful and even desirable in her day. I hear that. It’s still countercultural. (Luke 10:38 ff)

I read John 11 this morning. Mary was sitting down again – granted, they were in deep grief after the death of their brother, Lazurus; but this time it was Martha who went to Jesus when she heard he was coming. They had such an intimate conversation there on the path. I can’t get over how tender Jesus was with women and how many first things he told them – things that not even the disciples or theologians knew about God. In this case, he told her the Seventh “I Am” of the Gospel of John. (You know how theologians love the numbers, and this being number Seven, the perfect number? So how perfect is that?) He told her: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies....Do you believe this?” And she answered giving the first clear confession of Christ in the Apostle’s book, saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

I love her. I plan to talk to her one day. I pray for wisdom to know when to prepare and work like she did and when to let it go so I can sit around like Mary when something more important arrives.

Dick Keyes, author and L’Abri worker, asks: “Which is more important? Washing dishes or praying? It can be a sign of sin to pray when it is your turn to wash the dishes.”

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to Communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.
- "The Principle or Foundation" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

It is an error to think that those who flee worldly affairs and engage in contemplation are leading an angelic life….We know that men were created to busy themselves with labor and that no sacrifice is more pleasing to God than when each one attends to his calling and endeavors well to live for the common good.
- Calvin’s Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke – Vol. 2

Leonard Cohen, now in his seventies, is renown for his poetry and music. Over the years many of his songs have been covered by such groups as U2 and Jeff Buckley. His task in the Buddhist monastery on Mt. Baldy in California was to care for the daily needs of his aging Zen master, dressing him, feeding him, walking him. His reflection on that work is interesting:

“For many years I was known as a monk. I shaved my head and wore robes and got up very early. I hated everyone, but acted generously and no one found me out. My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke, it caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.”
- From the film documentary: I’m Your Man - Leonard Cohen.

A Duck For A Change

2008-07-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

[Notes from Toad Hall, Final Notes - Summer 2008]

We’ve been watching the primaries all year and thinking about our candidates, but in the end, I might vote for Duck. True, he doesn’t have a pastor, and he hasn’t heard the bullets buzzing past his head, but he knows what it’s like to have no compensation for the work you do. It’s a long story. It started down on Farmer Brown’s farm where Duck was plain sick and tired of all the chores he had to do, and so were the rest of the animals.

It was always: “PIGS – Clean Under The Beds. COWS – Weed The Garden. SHEEP – Sweep The Barn. DUCK – Take Out The Trash - Mow The Lawn - Grind The Coffee Beans.”

“At the end of each day the pigs are covered in lint bunnies. The cows are covered in weeds. The sheep are covered in dust. And Duck is covered in tiny bits of grass and espresso beans.”

Promising the animals a “kinder gentler farm,” Duck began his political career. He was so danged good at it, he decided to run for president. I won’t give the final election results away; I’ll let you get hold of this delightful children’s book written by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Betsy Lewin. It should sit on your coffee table for awhile, whoever you are.

Warmly,
Margie Haack