Yesterday afternoon while the little kids napped we (a total of five adults) sat on the deck and explored the Myers-Briggs personality test, and then pursued applications and implications of our findings to our relationships. It was entertaining and revealing, to be sure, but also encouraging from an, “Oh, well! You’re really wired to be THAT WAY…so that means you don’t just do/say things to intentionally blow my mind” point of view.
As I type this, my laptop computer is sitting on the bedside table beneath the newborn baby pictures of my kids hanging on the wall. How did we all get to be so incredibly/uniquely different, as proven by those tests? And yet we’re all created in the image of God? I have to stop and let that soak in…how we’re all little chips off the old block, a Block that defies our comprehension and yet longs for relational connection with each little sliver and shaving and flake of sawdust. We all, in our diversity, belong to each other more than we know by virtue of belonging to Him.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Passing the Lakie Torch
Labor Day weekend is a bittersweet time for those of us claiming “lakie” heritage. (For those who don’t know, my own fabricated dictionary says that word, lakie, is pronounced lake-ie – not lack-ie - and is defined as “one who loves and frequents lake environments.”)
When I was a young child, the cicada-whirring auditory end-of-summer cue tolled a death knell in my mind. (I can’t hear it anymore, but I do remember, oh so well.) Dread increased as Labor Day crept closer on the calendar, and each day magnified resistance. Labor Day was the annual turning point, the time to close up the lake cottage - turn off water, cover the furniture with sheets, and pull blinds on the windows - and return to public life and properness: shoes, real clothes, bedtimes, school. It was also a time to re-confront the stress levels and emotional volatility my parents assumed whenever we were NOT at the lake.
But…back to the present Labor Day weekend. Although we’ve had an unusually cool summer this year, yesterday’s weather was perfect, if a bit late - one of the most summery days of the last several months, and optimal from a lakie’s point of view. Clear blue skies stood over calm, sun-sparkled water as we dragged out the slalom skis (two sizes), wakeboard and skylon, and the kid-friendly tube with the recessed “seat” – all this STUFF for those who dared to be dragged behind the Moomba (our little sportscar of a ski boat). We ate some of the usual summery fare outside at the round deck table for lunch and dinner – various dips, dippers and sandwiches for lunch, plus the full-meal-deal for dinner: charcoal-grilled meat (this time pork loin) with plenty of side fixins.
Grampa and Troy (who is now feeling fine, if you’ve followed his recent hospitalization story) took the fishing boat out after dinner and landed half a dozen fish, mostly crappie with a warmouth and bluegill, I think. Right now I can’t help but also review the previous evening when Grampa caught an enormous dogfish from the end of the pier, and effectively wow-ed everyone with stories about catching this “prehistoric” fish some weeks earlier. He re-told how he fought him all the way to the net both times, and decided on this later catch to end his life since he was a “trash fish” that ate “good fish” from the top of the food chain. It was a bit dramatic. The carcass was carted to the middle of the lake in the fishing boat where it was dumped overboard – a candidate for Davy Jones’ locker. But at least that old dog-of-a-fish wasn’t around to scare away Troy’s catch last night.
Hopefully the little grandkids (those in attendance, ages 1-5) grew some ground-roots lake memories of their own yesterday, and a few more will show up today and tomorrow…critical to the passing of the familial lakie torch. Someday we’ll be gone, and our lakie identity will belong to them.
When I was a young child, the cicada-whirring auditory end-of-summer cue tolled a death knell in my mind. (I can’t hear it anymore, but I do remember, oh so well.) Dread increased as Labor Day crept closer on the calendar, and each day magnified resistance. Labor Day was the annual turning point, the time to close up the lake cottage - turn off water, cover the furniture with sheets, and pull blinds on the windows - and return to public life and properness: shoes, real clothes, bedtimes, school. It was also a time to re-confront the stress levels and emotional volatility my parents assumed whenever we were NOT at the lake.
But…back to the present Labor Day weekend. Although we’ve had an unusually cool summer this year, yesterday’s weather was perfect, if a bit late - one of the most summery days of the last several months, and optimal from a lakie’s point of view. Clear blue skies stood over calm, sun-sparkled water as we dragged out the slalom skis (two sizes), wakeboard and skylon, and the kid-friendly tube with the recessed “seat” – all this STUFF for those who dared to be dragged behind the Moomba (our little sportscar of a ski boat). We ate some of the usual summery fare outside at the round deck table for lunch and dinner – various dips, dippers and sandwiches for lunch, plus the full-meal-deal for dinner: charcoal-grilled meat (this time pork loin) with plenty of side fixins.
Grampa and Troy (who is now feeling fine, if you’ve followed his recent hospitalization story) took the fishing boat out after dinner and landed half a dozen fish, mostly crappie with a warmouth and bluegill, I think. Right now I can’t help but also review the previous evening when Grampa caught an enormous dogfish from the end of the pier, and effectively wow-ed everyone with stories about catching this “prehistoric” fish some weeks earlier. He re-told how he fought him all the way to the net both times, and decided on this later catch to end his life since he was a “trash fish” that ate “good fish” from the top of the food chain. It was a bit dramatic. The carcass was carted to the middle of the lake in the fishing boat where it was dumped overboard – a candidate for Davy Jones’ locker. But at least that old dog-of-a-fish wasn’t around to scare away Troy’s catch last night.
Hopefully the little grandkids (those in attendance, ages 1-5) grew some ground-roots lake memories of their own yesterday, and a few more will show up today and tomorrow…critical to the passing of the familial lakie torch. Someday we’ll be gone, and our lakie identity will belong to them.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Mother-Memories
If my mother were still living today, she’d be celebrating her birthday – her 103rd birthday.
She was born in 1906 and passed away in 1988. My memories of her last years are fuzzy, at best. That was another lifetime ago when my kids were still little and needy and my life was consumed by my own mothering role - back when my limited childhood perceptions of Mother’s chronic depression still blinded me, in large part, to the soul and spirit of the person who lived within that Alzheimer-wracked mind.
Her last months were spent in a debilitating fog, although there were little breakthroughs along the way. One day she paced the floor of the nursing home with an irregular gait while chanting “I good no am, I good no am, I good no am” - wringing her arthritic hands, bouncing off the walls, stumbling with uncharacteristic unsteadiness. Much of the time she couldn’t speak at all but sat hunched and withered in a chair, staring blankly at the floor with a pocked-with-worry forehead.
However, there were breakthroughs every now and then. One day we visited the city park for lunch and she used her teeth to gingerly pull the slick, mayonnaise-laden shaved ham from her sandwich, then very intentionally poked the floppy slices the rest of the way into her mouth with her whole hand, glibly smearing the white greasy stuff all over her face without caring in the least that she was making a royal mess. It seemed like a moment of ultimate freedom in a strangely childlike sense – a flash of time when it didn’t matter what anyone thought, when she just followed her instincts there in the great outdoors (in the context of her beloved nature environment) and savored the ability to delight in the sensory enjoyment of that dismembered sandwich. No Emily Post strings attached, no social protocol. That was also the day an intelligible sentence interrupted her usual nonsense chatter: “I could walk all the way to New York today!” (We were in Indiana, and as far as I know, she had no history of friends in New York or any particular reason to go there.)
We pulled off a birthday party for her at the nursing home that year, her last party since she died a month later. It was a grand affair that somehow created a spark deep inside, one that called her to rise, in as full-flame as possible, to the occasion. Her eyes sparkled for the first time in ages as she donned a floppy polka-dotted clown cap to join the fully outfitted, face-painted clowns (my then 6-year-old daughter Katie and myself). She smiled and cooed with verbal inflections (no intelligible words, though) reminiscent of days of old. I’d made a birthday cake, one of those doll things with the Barbie torso sticking out the top of a bundt cake shaped like a southern-belle-type hoop skirt, and all the grandkids were there to help celebrate – as well as my father, who had stopped visiting her because of his own painful inability to deal with her level of infirmity.
Candles protruded from the cake-skirt in a prancing ring-around-the-frosting-roses. When we lit them, Barbie’s synthetic hair caught on fire – OH CRUD! - and left a smoky chemical stink in the air. No doubt it was toxic, and Barbie looked more than slightly disheveled afterwards (definitely a bad hair day), but Mother didn’t notice, let alone care. It was a PARTY! That’s all that mattered.
We offered her a few small gifts, too, which the kids helped unwrap (her motor skills were bad at that point and her fingers like stiff sticks) - but I don’t remember what they were. Things like a pad of paper and pencil, I think, since she still liked to write long, fluent-looking lines (pages) of scribbles. I thought those lines and lines of “writing” might be some sort of code representing whatever might be lurking behind the confusion in her mind. I never could make sense of them for the most part, although sometimes a series of letters would repeat themselves, like “phmg.” Once a four-letter word showed up twice in the midst of other gibberish: LOVE.
That was all such a long time ago: twenty-one years.
I wish I could throw another party for her now, something elegant. Perhaps I’m just a little bit wiser, a little more able to see beyond my own smoke-screen of attitudes and assumptions. Actually, I wish I could go back in time to her 60th birthday (I just celebrated my 60th recently) and get to know her at my same age. I’d love the opportunity to talk to her one-on-one and dig a little into the depths of a psyche and heart I never knew.
She was born in 1906 and passed away in 1988. My memories of her last years are fuzzy, at best. That was another lifetime ago when my kids were still little and needy and my life was consumed by my own mothering role - back when my limited childhood perceptions of Mother’s chronic depression still blinded me, in large part, to the soul and spirit of the person who lived within that Alzheimer-wracked mind.
Her last months were spent in a debilitating fog, although there were little breakthroughs along the way. One day she paced the floor of the nursing home with an irregular gait while chanting “I good no am, I good no am, I good no am” - wringing her arthritic hands, bouncing off the walls, stumbling with uncharacteristic unsteadiness. Much of the time she couldn’t speak at all but sat hunched and withered in a chair, staring blankly at the floor with a pocked-with-worry forehead.
However, there were breakthroughs every now and then. One day we visited the city park for lunch and she used her teeth to gingerly pull the slick, mayonnaise-laden shaved ham from her sandwich, then very intentionally poked the floppy slices the rest of the way into her mouth with her whole hand, glibly smearing the white greasy stuff all over her face without caring in the least that she was making a royal mess. It seemed like a moment of ultimate freedom in a strangely childlike sense – a flash of time when it didn’t matter what anyone thought, when she just followed her instincts there in the great outdoors (in the context of her beloved nature environment) and savored the ability to delight in the sensory enjoyment of that dismembered sandwich. No Emily Post strings attached, no social protocol. That was also the day an intelligible sentence interrupted her usual nonsense chatter: “I could walk all the way to New York today!” (We were in Indiana, and as far as I know, she had no history of friends in New York or any particular reason to go there.)
We pulled off a birthday party for her at the nursing home that year, her last party since she died a month later. It was a grand affair that somehow created a spark deep inside, one that called her to rise, in as full-flame as possible, to the occasion. Her eyes sparkled for the first time in ages as she donned a floppy polka-dotted clown cap to join the fully outfitted, face-painted clowns (my then 6-year-old daughter Katie and myself). She smiled and cooed with verbal inflections (no intelligible words, though) reminiscent of days of old. I’d made a birthday cake, one of those doll things with the Barbie torso sticking out the top of a bundt cake shaped like a southern-belle-type hoop skirt, and all the grandkids were there to help celebrate – as well as my father, who had stopped visiting her because of his own painful inability to deal with her level of infirmity.
Candles protruded from the cake-skirt in a prancing ring-around-the-frosting-roses. When we lit them, Barbie’s synthetic hair caught on fire – OH CRUD! - and left a smoky chemical stink in the air. No doubt it was toxic, and Barbie looked more than slightly disheveled afterwards (definitely a bad hair day), but Mother didn’t notice, let alone care. It was a PARTY! That’s all that mattered.
We offered her a few small gifts, too, which the kids helped unwrap (her motor skills were bad at that point and her fingers like stiff sticks) - but I don’t remember what they were. Things like a pad of paper and pencil, I think, since she still liked to write long, fluent-looking lines (pages) of scribbles. I thought those lines and lines of “writing” might be some sort of code representing whatever might be lurking behind the confusion in her mind. I never could make sense of them for the most part, although sometimes a series of letters would repeat themselves, like “phmg.” Once a four-letter word showed up twice in the midst of other gibberish: LOVE.
That was all such a long time ago: twenty-one years.
I wish I could throw another party for her now, something elegant. Perhaps I’m just a little bit wiser, a little more able to see beyond my own smoke-screen of attitudes and assumptions. Actually, I wish I could go back in time to her 60th birthday (I just celebrated my 60th recently) and get to know her at my same age. I’d love the opportunity to talk to her one-on-one and dig a little into the depths of a psyche and heart I never knew.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Hey Grinch...Wait!
In my opinion, our current instant-gratification culture enables us to develop warped attitudes about waiting. Blank space is often seen as a wasteful inconvenience: an annoying “waiting game.” We morph into our own adaptations of Dr. Seuss’s Grinch when the doctor’s office puts our phone call on indefinite hold, or when we’re forced to wait in the grocery line because a balking cash register has confounded its teen-aged checker. There is very little profit in waiting, we think. We drum our fingers; we sigh; we roll our narrow eyes full of Grinch disdain. After two minutes we slam down the phone in disgust with an “I give up” flailing of jointless Grinch arms. We stare with tentacle-like icicles (those sharp, penetrating, Grinch-type) that make the inept grocery checker girl freeze up even more.
Unfortunately, this attitude bleeds into our relationship with God. We don’t give ourselves a chance to listen for His voice when steaming at the seams with emotional Grinch-ness that holds Him at arm’s length. Oddly, we don’t even recognize those moments of Grinch-inducing, circumstantial waiting for what they are: opportunities to wait on Him.
Instead, while we’re on hold waiting to speak with a nurse (for example), the Grinch in us frowns while the music poring through the phone receiver seems loud and obnoxious, or otherwise not to our taste (grumble-grrrr). The professional-sounding voice periodically interrupting the music just makes it worse: “Your call is important to us. Please hold, and calls will be answered in the order they were received.” Bah!
The inexperienced grocery checker doesn’t even make eye contact. We may feel sorry for her, but also desperately expect her to apologize for inconveniencing us - even if the problem isn’t her fault. Really all SHE wants is to crawl under the revolving belt and hide her blushing inadequacy. She needs grace; she gets Grinch.
Oh – and what about that driver in the car just ahead who doesn’t notice the light has turned from red to green? That’s our ticket to blast the horn and Grinch-whisper (or at least think) a disgusted snarl. After all, waiting could cost us something near and dear: maybe five, or heaven forbid, ten seconds.
This may sound harsh, and yet if we’re willing to be transparent I think there’s at least a shred of Grinchy truth here. We may have grown past extreme Grinchiness, but I bet we’ve all (without exception) been guilty of putting others through the Grinch-wringer.
With that said, collectively we can be an easily insulted, almost-rabid people at times, foaming at the mouth with our own Grinch-crazed, insistent notions about monitoring our minutes and hours, and thus our lives. I suppose part of this is because in this culture, chronology is a stern master. Long live the CLOCK! But even when timing isn’t critical, we’re ruled by an insatiable desire for control. We forget that our Lord is right there building character qualities and increasing our faith in those moments – if we dare allow Him a little space.
True waiting on God is a waning art, if only because compulsive Grinch-habits elbow it out of the picture. We give lip service to the thought that “His timing is always perfect,” then turn right around and judge (snap-snap) others who so rudely steal our precious time. Our practiced Grinch-patterns must be upheld, or so we think, and we forge ahead as if the sweaty, exhausting purpose of our lives is to “make hay while the sun shines” - even if it means forcing our own agenda on others.
This is a paradox needing resolution. If we believe kairos (God-time) intersects with chronos (earth-time), then perhaps we need to learn how to (in blunt terms) STOP. Stop obsessing in order to wait; in order to be led. Stop Grinching; start waiting. Expect kairos and chronos to meld. I have a feeling the collective Grinch might melt away in large part if we could just get a handle on our attitudes about time.
My paraphrase of Romans 8:25:
“…if (the pivotal turning point) we (those Grinches justified by faith and quickened by His Spirit) hope (believe in God’s promise) for what we do not yet have (for full redemption, which I like to think includes current moment-to-moment sanctification), we (as defined above) wait (expect, look forward to) for it (for the fulfillment) patiently (calmly, with forbearance).”
Unfortunately, this attitude bleeds into our relationship with God. We don’t give ourselves a chance to listen for His voice when steaming at the seams with emotional Grinch-ness that holds Him at arm’s length. Oddly, we don’t even recognize those moments of Grinch-inducing, circumstantial waiting for what they are: opportunities to wait on Him.
Instead, while we’re on hold waiting to speak with a nurse (for example), the Grinch in us frowns while the music poring through the phone receiver seems loud and obnoxious, or otherwise not to our taste (grumble-grrrr). The professional-sounding voice periodically interrupting the music just makes it worse: “Your call is important to us. Please hold, and calls will be answered in the order they were received.” Bah!
The inexperienced grocery checker doesn’t even make eye contact. We may feel sorry for her, but also desperately expect her to apologize for inconveniencing us - even if the problem isn’t her fault. Really all SHE wants is to crawl under the revolving belt and hide her blushing inadequacy. She needs grace; she gets Grinch.
Oh – and what about that driver in the car just ahead who doesn’t notice the light has turned from red to green? That’s our ticket to blast the horn and Grinch-whisper (or at least think) a disgusted snarl. After all, waiting could cost us something near and dear: maybe five, or heaven forbid, ten seconds.
This may sound harsh, and yet if we’re willing to be transparent I think there’s at least a shred of Grinchy truth here. We may have grown past extreme Grinchiness, but I bet we’ve all (without exception) been guilty of putting others through the Grinch-wringer.
With that said, collectively we can be an easily insulted, almost-rabid people at times, foaming at the mouth with our own Grinch-crazed, insistent notions about monitoring our minutes and hours, and thus our lives. I suppose part of this is because in this culture, chronology is a stern master. Long live the CLOCK! But even when timing isn’t critical, we’re ruled by an insatiable desire for control. We forget that our Lord is right there building character qualities and increasing our faith in those moments – if we dare allow Him a little space.
True waiting on God is a waning art, if only because compulsive Grinch-habits elbow it out of the picture. We give lip service to the thought that “His timing is always perfect,” then turn right around and judge (snap-snap) others who so rudely steal our precious time. Our practiced Grinch-patterns must be upheld, or so we think, and we forge ahead as if the sweaty, exhausting purpose of our lives is to “make hay while the sun shines” - even if it means forcing our own agenda on others.
This is a paradox needing resolution. If we believe kairos (God-time) intersects with chronos (earth-time), then perhaps we need to learn how to (in blunt terms) STOP. Stop obsessing in order to wait; in order to be led. Stop Grinching; start waiting. Expect kairos and chronos to meld. I have a feeling the collective Grinch might melt away in large part if we could just get a handle on our attitudes about time.
My paraphrase of Romans 8:25:
“…if (the pivotal turning point) we (those Grinches justified by faith and quickened by His Spirit) hope (believe in God’s promise) for what we do not yet have (for full redemption, which I like to think includes current moment-to-moment sanctification), we (as defined above) wait (expect, look forward to) for it (for the fulfillment) patiently (calmly, with forbearance).”
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Blabbering and Dabbling
I never knew I could be such a blabbermouth. I guess I DID know it - I’ve just been in denial.
My friend Kay is staying here at the lake house with me while recuperating from foot surgery, and I keep bending her ear (youch). She’s a great listener AND conversationalist, but if I were in her shoes (um, literally one shoe and one ice pack) I might be trying to figure out how to discreetly escape the nose-to-nose chatter flowing freely from my mouth: artesian jabber. In this sardine-can-of-a-house there’s no hiding place except for the itty-bitty-circa-1961-bathroom that is hardly a desirable place to hang out, especially when rubber-tipped crutches get all skewered up in the rug. Her foot is in no shape for walking, let alone running away, so I guess she’s just stuck with my squirrel chattering. Or actually, just picture Woodstock doing his little muffled megaphone-sounding thing: “wah-wah, wa-wa-wa-wah, waaah.” Yep, that would be pretty close to what I must sound like.
Yesterday we flew the lakeside coop for a little change of scene and a spin around the sunshine-dappled southwest Michigan countryside. The projected destination was my currently favorite small town hot spot, Decatur Daily Grind. My thought was to just sort of dabble our way along as we drove there, no schedule or timeframe allowed, and watch the Queen Anne’s Lace nodding and bowing to us as if we were royalty on that red-carpet-of-a-county-washboard-style, spine-jarring road. Actually that court of Queen Anne blossoming-heads-of-state descended from a long line of Queens, perhaps extending way back to the original Garden and the King Himself. It hit me (briefly) that we were just blabber-dabblers in comparison, the ones who should have been paying homage to the magnificence and splendor of all those many lace-frocked Queens.
Lunch at the Grind was superb in quality and taste, presentation and service. Kay treated me to a “Tree Hugger” sandwich in accord with my disposition toward fresh vegetables. I do love Eating Green as long as I can keep away from tastebud-abductors like SUGAR. We dabbled and blabbered our way through lunch, accompanied by a silent yellow parrot perched in his corner cage, a troupe of saggy-looking, in-and-out teenagers, and a handsome black mutt-of-a-dog whose face and cocoa-brown eyes reminded me too much of my beloved, deceased Tyler – ohhhhh, those EYES.
Once back home, Kay kicked back in the recliner to snooze and I ceased from blabber. No, that’s a lie. A big, fat one. I just shifted to typing the blab out on the computer screen – which is totally legal, although it confirms my blabbermouth tendencies.
My friend Kay is staying here at the lake house with me while recuperating from foot surgery, and I keep bending her ear (youch). She’s a great listener AND conversationalist, but if I were in her shoes (um, literally one shoe and one ice pack) I might be trying to figure out how to discreetly escape the nose-to-nose chatter flowing freely from my mouth: artesian jabber. In this sardine-can-of-a-house there’s no hiding place except for the itty-bitty-circa-1961-bathroom that is hardly a desirable place to hang out, especially when rubber-tipped crutches get all skewered up in the rug. Her foot is in no shape for walking, let alone running away, so I guess she’s just stuck with my squirrel chattering. Or actually, just picture Woodstock doing his little muffled megaphone-sounding thing: “wah-wah, wa-wa-wa-wah, waaah.” Yep, that would be pretty close to what I must sound like.
Yesterday we flew the lakeside coop for a little change of scene and a spin around the sunshine-dappled southwest Michigan countryside. The projected destination was my currently favorite small town hot spot, Decatur Daily Grind. My thought was to just sort of dabble our way along as we drove there, no schedule or timeframe allowed, and watch the Queen Anne’s Lace nodding and bowing to us as if we were royalty on that red-carpet-of-a-county-washboard-style, spine-jarring road. Actually that court of Queen Anne blossoming-heads-of-state descended from a long line of Queens, perhaps extending way back to the original Garden and the King Himself. It hit me (briefly) that we were just blabber-dabblers in comparison, the ones who should have been paying homage to the magnificence and splendor of all those many lace-frocked Queens.
Lunch at the Grind was superb in quality and taste, presentation and service. Kay treated me to a “Tree Hugger” sandwich in accord with my disposition toward fresh vegetables. I do love Eating Green as long as I can keep away from tastebud-abductors like SUGAR. We dabbled and blabbered our way through lunch, accompanied by a silent yellow parrot perched in his corner cage, a troupe of saggy-looking, in-and-out teenagers, and a handsome black mutt-of-a-dog whose face and cocoa-brown eyes reminded me too much of my beloved, deceased Tyler – ohhhhh, those EYES.
Once back home, Kay kicked back in the recliner to snooze and I ceased from blabber. No, that’s a lie. A big, fat one. I just shifted to typing the blab out on the computer screen – which is totally legal, although it confirms my blabbermouth tendencies.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Love Me, Love Me Not
Daisy petals
Telling time
Minutes, hours, days, years
Love me, love me not
Droop and fall
Shadows creep
Birth and death, heart songs speak
Love me, love me not
Gravel roads
Twist and turn
Wedding day, cemetery bouquet
Love me, love me not
One by one
Drip-drip-drop
Tick-tick-tock, eternal clock
Love me, love me not
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Nests and Wings
For decades I’ve been a fan (and collector) of abandoned but artistic/symbolic bird nests. Off and on, nests of various sizes and shapes have perched here and there in my house as icons of protection/shelter and new life.
I’ve also used the word “nesting” as a way of expressing my own instinctive longings to resourcefully build a home with whatever components might be available. “I’m just nesting,” I’ve explained while rearranging plants, books, pictures or old memorabilia. While I don’t promote clutter for its own sake, I also don’t like the idea of living in a sterile or boring environment.
But nests are, after all, impermanent, temporary things; my own nest-focus can keep me within my own self-limited nest-framework when I’m tempted to become set in my ways, opinionated, self-contained. I talk about an eternal perspective of life while embracing the temporal; I say love conquers all, and yet forget to expect it to miraculously redefine my nest.
In an old (1939) book entitled, “Springs in the Valley,” the author says: “God, like the eagle, stirs our nest. Yesterday it was the place for us; today there is a new plan. He wrecks the nest, although He knows it is dear to us; perhaps because it IS dear to us…”
Yesterday a friend emailed me online pictures of 21-year-old Katie Kirkpatrick who was attending a Christian college in Michigan. I saw a beautiful but emaciated blonde riddled with cancer on the day she was wed to Nick Godwin. She died 5 days later, and her spirit went Home. This is a story of Greater Love that survived to testify beyond Katie’s eaten-alive body and her broken-and-blown-apart nest-of-dreams.
http://bop.nppa.org/2006/still_photography/winners/OES/67966/134497.html
Some time ago (years ago) in a National Geographic story, a ranger in California was surveying the aftermath of a forest fire and came upon a charred, statuesque bird corpse. The account says, “…he struck it, (and) three tiny chicks scurried from under their dead mother's wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise. She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her babies.”
I’ve been told I’m a survivor. However, a true survivor may need to evacuate a nest (not only a dwelling but a habitual lifestyle, ideology, or dream) for one reason or another. Where to go? Security is a matter of being positioned beneath God’s wings, whatever the circumstances and wherever else I happen to be – take Katie Kirkpatrick for example, or those baby birds in the forest fire.
“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” (Psalm 91:4)”
I’ve also used the word “nesting” as a way of expressing my own instinctive longings to resourcefully build a home with whatever components might be available. “I’m just nesting,” I’ve explained while rearranging plants, books, pictures or old memorabilia. While I don’t promote clutter for its own sake, I also don’t like the idea of living in a sterile or boring environment.
But nests are, after all, impermanent, temporary things; my own nest-focus can keep me within my own self-limited nest-framework when I’m tempted to become set in my ways, opinionated, self-contained. I talk about an eternal perspective of life while embracing the temporal; I say love conquers all, and yet forget to expect it to miraculously redefine my nest.
In an old (1939) book entitled, “Springs in the Valley,” the author says: “God, like the eagle, stirs our nest. Yesterday it was the place for us; today there is a new plan. He wrecks the nest, although He knows it is dear to us; perhaps because it IS dear to us…”
Yesterday a friend emailed me online pictures of 21-year-old Katie Kirkpatrick who was attending a Christian college in Michigan. I saw a beautiful but emaciated blonde riddled with cancer on the day she was wed to Nick Godwin. She died 5 days later, and her spirit went Home. This is a story of Greater Love that survived to testify beyond Katie’s eaten-alive body and her broken-and-blown-apart nest-of-dreams.
http://bop.nppa.org/2006/still_photography/winners/OES/67966/134497.html
Some time ago (years ago) in a National Geographic story, a ranger in California was surveying the aftermath of a forest fire and came upon a charred, statuesque bird corpse. The account says, “…he struck it, (and) three tiny chicks scurried from under their dead mother's wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise. She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her babies.”
I’ve been told I’m a survivor. However, a true survivor may need to evacuate a nest (not only a dwelling but a habitual lifestyle, ideology, or dream) for one reason or another. Where to go? Security is a matter of being positioned beneath God’s wings, whatever the circumstances and wherever else I happen to be – take Katie Kirkpatrick for example, or those baby birds in the forest fire.
“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” (Psalm 91:4)”
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