Bookmarks

The Seattle U. alumni mug sitting on my desk holds a collection of bookmarks. They come from and represent all sorts of people, places, and events in my past: Borders Books & Music in Tacoma, "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie" from the Salt Lake Acting Company, a beautiful fully beaded bookmark from a friend, multi-color plastic markers from other friends, "It's Good to be Queen", a lovely paper marker with an orange tassel on it with a French reprint from another friend's trip to France, a metallic green one that says Prayer in big letters, and a simple paper one with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." There are also lots markers scattered through the books on my shelves. I'm not sure how to get these precious markers into my Kindle, but I'll worry about that another time.

My daily devotional reading book is on our kitchen table where Rod and I have clearly delineated our spaces. My pile's on the left with his on the right. It's a small table, but so is our kitchen space so it works. I've been using my current devotional book since last May when I picked it up at the Mt. Hermon bookstore and it's larger than most books of this nature. It's a full 5" x 8.5" and quite thick. It came with its own pretty attached silk bookmark so until I went through the locked safe it was just fine.

My Mom filled up the small, fireproof, locked safe several years ago when her mind was still clear, but she also wanted to be prepared for the day it filled with cobwebs. That particular day came into our lives a few years ago and this past year we dismantled her home after she was moved to a residential facility for dementia patients. My brother, Mark, grabbed the small safe on one of his pass-throughs last winter when he was trying to keep her safe and secure at home with daily caregivers. He passed it to me this past October in a parking lot outside Missoula and on one of the nights of that particular visit I sat in our hotel room going through the safe. I thought I knew everything in there, but surely I didn't.

The new bookmark in my devotional book fits just perfectly as it's the same dimensions as the book. It's a very old church bulletin (order of worship) from Olivet Lutheran Church in Orange, CA, Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1957. I found this obscure historical document in her safe and the reason it moved from there to my book is this line: "Baptized today is Sheralyn Rowland, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. George Rowland. We pray God's blessings on this child."

For all the disconnects, fights, and disagreements I had with my parents through the years, the fact that my Mom kept this account of my infant baptism struck me very deeply. I'd known I was baptized at one month old, but I didn't know it was on Thanksgiving Day.

Now when I open my big devotional book I touch the future God's calling me to while holding my baptism day in my hands. There's still unexplored power and significance in this particular bookmark. I'm looking at it's old-style, old type-written presentation right now and it inexplicably grounds me.

Other, even more significant, treasures were found in the safe that now sits just a few feet away from me in my study. Their revealed secrets are for another day.

"...the perpetual answer of life..."

Meditations of the Heart, by Rev. Howard Thurman, was first published in 1953 and then re-published in 1981 following his death at age 81. Rev. Thurman was a giant in the theological world of his time. He advised Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others in the civil rights movement. He was the first African-American dean of a Caucasian university. He was a prolific writer of Christian reflection and mystical thought. If I'd been fortunate enough to enter one of his congregations, I most likely would have never left. However, through his writings I can enter his thoughts and teachings, and so today I bring forward to our present one of his meditations: 

Merry Christmas

There is a strange irony in the usual salutation, "Merry Christmas," when most of the people on this planet are thrown back upon themselves for food which they do not possess, for resources that have long since been exhausted, and for vitality which has already run its course. Despite this condition, the inescapable fact remains that Christmas symbolizes hope even at a moment when hope seems utterly fantastic. The raw materials of the Christmas mood are a newborn baby, a family, friendly animals, and labor. An endless process of births is the perpetual answer of life to the fact of death. It says that life keeps coming on, keeps seeking to fulfill itself, keeps affirming the margin of hope in the presence of desolation, pestilence and despair. It is not an accident that the birth rate seems always to increase during times of war, when the formal processes of man are engaged in the destruction of others. Welling up out of the depths of vast vitality  there is Something at work that is more authentic than the formal, discursive design of the human mind. As long as this is true ultimately, despair about the human race is groundless.

This meditation brings to memory "J" unit at the Washington State prison for women just north of Tacoma. I would have named that particular unit  "H" unit for Hope. It was the only place, save for the chapel, that held any hope at all within the wires, fences, and armed guards. It was the place where nonviolent inmates with short sentences were housed with their infants. At least eighteen infants below the age of twelve months lived there with their convicted mothers in 2001. Stepping onto that unit was equal to stepping out of the prison every Thursday night. 

Within this week I'll be twelve years removed from my prison chaplaincy and those babies are now entering adolescence somewhere in Washington. At one time they were "the perpetual answer of life to the fact of death," as described by Thurman. Given the circumstances of their beginnings, my hope and prayer this morning is that they are not living on the streets of Tacoma or held by the juvenile authorities. May they continue to "affirm the margin of hope in the presence of desolation." 

The Day After Christmas

Snow piling on the apples remaining in the backyard tree

It's snowing today. All day it will be snowing, they say. This is the first set of big storms to come through this season. I love watching the western horizon in search of the edge of the front passing over, but today there are no edges anywhere. It's only white and the mountain range I live on has disappeared from view at the end of the street. The backyard apple tree still bears those poor golden delicious gems never picked and now bearing about three inches of snow. I pay them homage here today out of respect for their fortitude and beauty out there in the cold, wet element.  They seem to believe that they will soon be rescued to the dining room table full of warmth  filled with hopeful exchanges.

There are no fruit trees in the front yard. Only an enormous, very old sycamore tree anchoring the west side of the house and a equally strong, yet more graceful birch tree holding down the east side. And in the middle across the street almost obscured in white the grandpa with his Santa hat is working hard to clear the ice and snow from the driveway. One of his grandchildren has been standing at the fence between her small body and the neighbor's backyard where other children play. They don't beckon her over and nor does she try. She only watches through the fence. I'm surprised to see her here today and I wonder if she'll be staying.

In the memory of early June of this year when it was hot, so hot we wished for snow, she and her four siblings were removed from the home by state officials. It wasn't safe for children, we have always known. In the privacy of our living rooms and kitchens we, the neighbors, have made many calls to the state seeking help for these vulnerable ones. Suddenly, that day in June the cars pulled up, the children loaded in, and they were gone.  It's not clear if her appearance today is a visit or a return to the setting of abuse and neglect. It's not possible to know. However, I will be watching to see and listening to hear the familiar sights and sounds of children pained by those charged to care for them.

Today is the day after Christmas and the little girl across the street is pulling her old, frozen bike out of the drift hoping that it's still a good ride. She presses forward for life, for interaction, for activity. The grandpa issues his familiar bellowing scream meant to keep her down, keep her in check and to keep her under his drunken thumb. The bike returns to its familiar position in the pile of junk against the house. She goes inside, closes the door.

Just yesterday we celebrated the arrival of another child. We sang for and gifted our lives to that child, the Christ child, and today virtually anywhere on our planet, clothed in snow or not, we see children in deep need of our songs calling for justice and our gifts rescuing them from danger.

This year, unlike many previous, it's more clear to me why the Christ child had to come. Unable to find the right words to describe this well, I leave it at this: The Christ child had to break into time and history to show us what truth, justice, and hope look like. Otherwise, we would never know. The Christ simply had to come.

Watching Mom's Christmas

The camera angle is one way and there's no zoom capacity, hence, I can see her at the end of the table in her usual spot (hum, it's the same seating position she always had when I was growing up - the head of the table!), but I can't glean very much detail. The people are running around getting food ready for the Christmas party, there are kids playing by the huge tree in the living area, and some of the staff are there with their families. There's no sound, but I imagine they have music playing and it's most likely pretty noisy. She just sits there and doesn't seem to move over the next two hours. I can't tell if she's happy or not. I can't tell what she's saying to the woman sitting next to her or what she's eating. I count about ten residents around the tables. When she's all done eating I watch as she leaves the table, turns her back, and returns to her room down the hall.

My heart is torn. Compared to last year when she sat at her own table with her head literally laying on her chest because she was too weak to lift it following two weeks in the hospital after a fall that nearly took her life, she's far better off. Compared to two years ago when she was alone on Christmas because she wouldn't let Mark come for dinner because she had shingles on her face, she's far better off.

Tomorrow morning, Christmas Eve day, I'll watch as one of the nurses helps her and the other residents open their Christmas presents. I sent her a lap desk and books with crossword puzzles to try to keep her brain engaged. Somehow, opening Christmas presents should always happen with family. She's safer and healthier, and better off where she lives now, but I expect that watching her open my presents with a stranger will be tough. It's been a long, hard year with decisions and changes made in her best interest. It ends with her in a better space with trained professionals providing her daily care.

The camera angle is one way and there's no zoom capacity. I think this might be best. If I could see close ups of her face, my heart would be torn more than it already has been this year.

Gun Rights vs. Gun Control

As you read this, please remember where I sit as I write -- in the reddest state in the nation. Following the horrible shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT, last week I decided to write my two Senators: Hatch and Lee. As I was sitting at the dining room table searching for their addresses the local newscast included a story about how upset gun owners in Utah are because their right to purchase semi-automatic, military style weapons might be in jeopardy  High volumes of semi-automatic assault rifles were flying out the doors of gun stores in this state. One man said defiantly to the reporter, "They can't take away my Second Amendment right to own an assault rifle!" I don't believe the Second Amendment says anything about assault weapons, but I don't believe either that he (or any of his friends or family) is interested in constitutional definitions.

In the simple task of trying to write to my Senators I gained a valuable insight. On Senator Hatch's list of email topics that I was asked to choose from there was "gun control" and Senator Lee's  list had "gun rights." My choice was to have an opinion on rights or control. People either have the right to carry any kind of weapon they can get their hands on or the same weapons need to be controlled. I don't believe anyone has the right to carry a weapon that, in the wrong hands, can kill twenty children in a matter of minutes. Back in 1993, on July 1st, the law firm shooting that inspired Senator Feinstein to write the original assault weapons ban legislation, tragically occurred in the halls of my former employer. I knew some of the people gunned down in their offices. I know what assault weapons can do. I know how they take life within a matter of seconds. No one has the right to carry a weapon that can cause this kind of irrevocable, devastating damage. No one.

Faith-Anne

A few weeks ago my friends, Jim and Sandy, started sending urgent text messages asking people to pray for a 13 year-old Cystic Fibrosis patient in the ICU of Colorado's Children's Hospital. The young teen was the granddaughter of Sandy's cousin and her health situation was quite serious. I shared her need with my church and signed up on CarePages to receive updates on her condition. I'd never met Faith-Anne or her family, but her story touched me. She was only 13 years old with her entire life ahead of her. Today the prayer requests took on a new urgency. Her family had to make the gut-wrenching decision to remove her from life support. The last text just came in, "Just heard that Faith has passed away," Sunday, Dec. 23, 7:50 pm. People across the globe die everyday, but I want to note that this particular young lady has left us tonight. Her family, no doubt, held her close as she slipped the bonds of her very ill body. Many people prayed for her healing and God's wisdom has healed her in this way. I don't know if Christmas is celebrated in Heaven, but if it is I believe a new angel has been added to the choir tonight singing with clean, healthy, clear lungs.