Just a thought for the day before I leave for Cincinnati:
Reconciliation
An act of reconciling or the state of being reconciled.
The process of making consistent or compatible.
Reconciling
To bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent
To reconsecrate
To restore
I have not written since the eve of our membership ceremony. So much has happened since that day. I will start by sharing with you in this posting, the words I spoke to the members of my new congregation, and thereby bring you up to date on that part of my journey.
Membership Sunday, January 24, 2010 – Naomi
I am not a newcomer to pain and disappointment. I did not live a charmed life. It was as a single desperate mother that I came to Reba Place Fellowship in 1972. I had come to the end of my road——what I knew how to do to survive. My first experience of worship at Reba was amazing. Most everyone will tell the same story: It was the abundance of love that drew me in; it felt unconditional and I sorely needed a place to lie down. Life at Reba had its ups and downs. It was a mixed bag, but one thing was certain: It was discipleship 24/7. I became a Christian there in the Immersion Method. Whether guided or misguided, we lived Matthew 18 in households of various sizes. There were a number of painfully misguided events that were personally devastating to me, but on the whole, I don’t believe I could have had a better grounding in Christian life and principles than I received at the Reba “boot-camp.”
Judy and I met at Reba Place and have been life partners for 32 years. Devotional journaling was an everyday event. During one of these times in our last few tumultuous months at Reba, we each received a word, or prophecy, that we were not to worry; and that God had given us to each other for the purpose of becoming the full persons he intended us to be.
Living this out was not possible at Reba and we eventually had to endure a painful leave taking. It was with this vision at the center of our life together that we journeyed through the next 30 years in a kind of Ruth and Naomi relationship, searching for an acceptable version of what we’d left behind.
( ) and I have been true partners through many deep waters. We’ve had many challenges as well as blessings. We survived and prospered in the secular world, but we never found another spiritual home for worship.
Now at the beginning of my 7th decade, having survived round one of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and the recent experience of church non-acceptance, I believe I am finally growing up and into the child God made me at the moment I was conceived. It has been a hard road with many rough stones, but here by the water, I build an altar of praise and thanksgiving to the One God—faithful life-giver, stone smoother, transformer and charmer who has indeed Called me by Name and never let the water overcome me.
After all is said and done and the fire has been laid to rest, I see that although only grafted in and not cradled in, I am a Mennonite and one day, just once, I’d like to wear a little white bonnet—to stand under it, just to know what it feels like to be so represented by honor.
I am delighted beyond words to be here…to lay down the gifts God has given me to give to you. It is an enormous blessing to be part of the wheel of life, turning and coming round right.
I had a few rough days and nights as my last post reveals. By Thursday I was nearly undone from sleeplessness and despair. A phone call to my fine feathered friend, whom I shall call the Empress Bird (EB), and another to her dear partner, Queen Bee (QB) brought enormous relief. In the evening Big Dawg and I spent a couple of hours with EB, a person much like me, and through sharing back and forth, all my feelings that had no place to go were witnessed and released. One more time, the waters were not permitted to overcome me. Empress Bird spoke many life changing things to me and I heard them somewhere inside of my own silver lining.
When we left, I had two recordings in my hands that Queen Bee made for us—one for Adopted Daughter and her pain, and one for me and my sleeplessness . My recording was 100% helpful. I slept like a baby. Got rid of some nasty fears through dreams, and am now convinced that whenever I hear the sound of QB’s voice I may just become dumb-struck! AD used hers last night and says it helped her so much. We are grateful receivers of God’s gifts…the miraculous and the useful…we are open mouths for all that God sends any which way it comes.
Tomorrow BD and I will become members of our Little Church That Could in the city and AD will rejoice. Many of our friends from here and there, across the years and recent, will be there. Songs of our hearts will be sung and we will share with everyone what it means to us to have come this long, long way. We will rejoice as endings fold themselves into new beginnings. Our good friend will come and sing Here by the Water for us…a song about the rough stones we are…stones only God can smooth, only God can make holy. That is our story, BD’s and mine…rough stones in the river of life.
Called by name….you are mine.
Cairn was built by Todd Friesen with love
Composite was made by Naomi with love..
Recently a friend shared stories with me of growing up with two grandmothers: Big Granny and Little Granny. I found these stories quite poignant. How lucky he is to have had these two wise women loving him into a fine person! And how lucky were his parents to have had extended family to help with the nurturing of their little birds. The extended family, common in Mennonite culture, is becoming rare in the nuclear-family-is-all Americana of today.
The other day he forwarded one of those trips down memory lane emails full of pictures and clever quips. It was about aprons. He says,
This was sent to me from a dear friend, who thought it might resonate. It certainly did, with memories of both Big Grandma and Little Grandma. I had to laugh at the dusting reference, and cry at the overall memory of what amazing, hardworking, capable and loving women they were—all stirred by a simple piece of cloth.
The Apron email begins this way:
I don’t think our kids know what an apron is. The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath, because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for dusting, drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
My own grandma came from the old country at a very advanced age, having survived the Armenian Genocide. She did not speak English. She probably wore an apron, but I don’t remember.What I remember are the black clothes she wore, head to toe and the sadness she carried about her. However, my mother wore aprons, big-time…it was the 1950’s and aprons were still a practical piece of clothing for older women like my mother. I remember her nagging me to “put on an apron,” but I was headed for the 60’s and 70’s. By then aprons were getting smaller and smaller until by the 80’s they disappeared into jeans and sweat pants. Do I wear one now that I am o-l-d? No, I’m still doing the 80’s thing and wiping my hands on the side of my pants leg!
Here’s a little composite I made for you in honor of aprons…the face on the chubby lady in the center is my mother. The chubby body is not. Ah, the miracle of Photoshop!
Hi Mom!
This week I see light at the end of my long, project list tunnel. The major project on this list has been my participation in the biennial Mennonite Arts Weekend (MAW) coming up in Cincinnati on February 5-7. For the past 22 months I have been thinking about this in the back of my brain, and for the past 4 months working on it, front and center. The theme of the event is, The Art of Place: Sacred Spaces and Common Ground. My talk will focus on suffering as both sacred space and common ground. This will be followed up with a Power Point presentation of some of my work. I had never done Power Point—hadn’t even installed it on my computer, so I had to install and learn. Adopted Daughter helped me. (Not only is she a banker with thief-stopping knowledge of the world of credit, but she’s good at installing and walking me through PP!)
My presentation will be a total of 70 minutes. In the gallery I will have a four-panel installation of my cancer odyssey, Dying to Live, suspended from the ceiling—creating a space that will allow people exposure to what it feels like to have cancer. In addition to this I will have a few of my assemblage boxes on display, the handmade book version of Pailoun’s Story, additional digital montage work—both secular and liturgical, and Thin Places. If you think that this is a lot of stuff and I must be crazy, you are right. I don’t know what possessed me to cast such a wide net. It just kept growing is all I can say. Once I started putting it all together I realized it’s size. I am one to finish what I start and so I did…pretty much night and day.
This is not all I’ve been doing while this blog got thinner and thinner. As many of you may know, a lot has been going on in the LGBT inclusivity arena as well…painful and arduous experiences which led us to our present church community, where I have thrown myself into providing a stable visual art worship component. This has become a ministry—an outpouring of the gifts I have been given. Also in the mix is this blog which I have so enjoyed writing, AD’s cancer recurrence and my becoming a care provider. I am leaving out many lesser projects and tasks that wove in and out these past months in addition to the aforementioned. It is enough to say that I have learned that multi-tasking is impossible, but serial tasking is not only possible, it’s good medicine for both chem0brain and elderbrain.
So, I see the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s welcome…like springtime. Life’s rhythms are returning to a normal level of busy with time to even clean house every now and then (ugh!). In 1 week Big Dawg and I will become members of our new church and 10 days after that we will pick up our rented van, pack it full of all the MAW stuff, get in and head out to Cincinnati. The only gray spot in all of this rosy, forward tilt is the reality of AD’s health. Right now, as I write this, she is having a CT scan to determine the state of the state. We live in the now and celebrate it, breathing in and breathing out…
2010 came in like a lion…we hope it goes out like a lamb.
Full of hopeful anticipation, my partner, Big Dawg and I drove to a popular little 70’s, retro, coffee shop/diner about 15 miles west of the city to meet with the pastor of the”open and welcoming,” Mennonite church we have been attending for the past seven months. Our mission was to share our stories and discuss membership.
We were packed in table to table, with barely room to lean back in our chairs…but that goes along with retro 70’s, flower-power and all of that fun nostalgia, I am told. At the table immediately behind us…and I do mean behind us…were three persons: a young man sitting alone on the side nearest us (directly behind BD) and two women (or one woman and one man…I don’t remember which) on the side opposite. Sometime in the midst of our private conversation—in the midst of a universe of private conversations—the three people got up and left. It was after we’d closed with a prayer of thanksgiving, that BD noticed her wallet was missing from her bag. She was sure she must have left it at home and we quickly went home to reassure ourselves.
We arrived home and began a serious and repeated search effort: no wallet. None had been turned in at the diner. Eventually we ran out of places to look. Remembering that she did have her bag on the corner of her chair, and there was someone seated directly behind her, our brains began to clear. Slowly the pieces of recent memory accumulated and we realized that the wallet had been stolen, plain and simple. Having lost my own wallet a month or more ago, this was déjà vu. In that first experience the wallet was found, emptied of cash but found with everything else intact…happy ending—round one.
Adopted Daughter, being a banker herself, knew exactly what to do the first time around and went to work immediately one more time, as though it had been a dress rehearsal for the current, actual theft. The first thing she did was to box the thieves in electronically to minimize damage. Remembering what was in the wallet was challenging, there was a good amount of cash, but the most important items were the credit cards, insurance cards and driver’s license. The thieves, with their head-start had already used each card successfully with small purchases. Their attempt to obtain a large cash advance from the issuing bank of one of the cards was refused, but only because the card was new and didn’t yet carry a high credit amount. While the three brazen thieves were plying their trade, we contacted all the card companies as well as all three credit agencies and headed them off at the pass. Their last transaction was a cartload of items totaling over $600. When they got to the checkout, the card was not only rejected, but a warning sign flashed for the clerk to confiscate the card!
After our electronic vigilante work was done, we drove to the town where the incident took place to file a police report. While waiting for the officer to take our information, another woman came in to report a nearly identical experience happening that same morning, in the same town, in another tightly packed, little eatery. Unfortunately, her card carried a higher credit amount and she didn’t have the advantage of living with a banker who knows what to do on the double. During the prior week a woman reported her wallet stolen in a similar scenario. It began to look to us like stealing and dealing are alive and well and diners beware.
The following week was one of cleaning-up and counting our blessings. No one died. No one got mugged. Everyone lives to tell the tale (thieves not withstanding) and life goes on. We are working on ways to avoid carrying important items in purses and bags—not an easy thing to do for women. The people who make our clothes don’t think we need pockets. When they do give us a pocket or two, they’re small and more or less decorative—useless for anything but Kleenex.
The moral of the story? I’m working on that.
Happy 2010.
Yesterday, Adopted Daughter talked about her illness, her thoughts about the immediate future and the way in which she wants to ease into her dying days. It was a sobering talk…not long and not short…just about right for managing to mostly stay in-the-now. We are walking together toward an end that will receive her breath, and for a time will encapsulate mine. I have just commemorated my sister’s passing. I am ready, but for the longing to say: “No…not now, not yet!” But we know it is coming…we cancer people know the signs before others do. We know and quickly learn to savor each day. I hope I am not making it sound easy, because it is not.
Last night I also learned how deeply my Darling Daughter suffers from wounds inflicted so early in her life that she doesn’t have recall. But I do…I was there and I have been waiting for decades for confession and forgiveness. Now that perhaps it may happen in the coming year, I am breathless with hope and fear—fear of overload. Although the river has risen high enough to enter my throat at times, I have not swallowed nor drowned.
Learning Trust: I am becoming a receptacle…a wine skin, if you will, and there’s a strange sense of peace in that. In my best moments, I am a receiver of the Spirit through Christ, and through many others who have gone before. Because of this, I can also be a channel for the Spirit: Legacy – Inheritance.
AD and I are reading Henri Nouwen’s, Our Greatest Gift, A Meditation on Dying and Caring for a class our church will host in a few weeks. She and I will go together and learn how best to walk this walk in the company of Sisters and Brothers. We are both student’s in God’s classroom. Nevertheless, I confess to feeling best when she is here in the house with me, whether sleeping, waking, working, reading—whatever. I have two daughters, one biological and one “adopted.” One is slowly dying and the other slowly living. The wheel turns and we with it.
I love the concept of a chain of events. According to Wikipedia, a chain of events is a number of actions and their effects that are contiguous and linked together. Then there is the fabric of events, i.e., an expansion of the chain of events, emphasizing that chains of events are intertwined with each other as a fabric. Whether chain or fabric, such experiences can give one pause to reflect and reflect I shall.
It was snowing Saturday morning as partner Big Dawg and I packed up my 1999, All Wheel Drive, Outback with all the paraphernalia needed for updating the liturgical installation at our church from Advent to Christmas/Epiphany. I brought along everything I could think of that might be needed for this task, including an extra sweater and gloves without fingers, just in case the church was freezing cold inside…something I suspected could be the frugal case.
We arrived and were met at the door by the clean-up volunteers who generously donate their time in love. Being met at the door meant that we didn’t have to struggle with the stubborn locks that prefer to receive keys copied from the originals, lost long ago and now forgotten by everyone but the locks themselves. We hadn’t been there more than 10 minutes when I realized that I had left half the new material at home…the half I had to hang first! Although the church is only 20 minutes from home by toll road, it was snowing and I didn’t want to disturb Adopted Daughter’s rest by asking her to bring the missing pieces to us, so of course faithful partner, BD went back for the goods.
While she was gone I was busy with all the peripheral tasks. Then after about 45 minutes my cell phone rang and then stopped. I thought BD was outside the church door waiting for me to let her in, but no…no one at the door…just snow and cold. I called her back expecting anything but her shaky voice on the other end of the line. She told me that she had gotten halfway back to the church with the pieces I’d left behind, when the hood of the car angrily flew up, crashing the windshield, breaking the rear-view mirror and leaving only a couple of inches of cracked windshield for her to see the road and steer the errant vehicle off to the side through ice and driving snow, while traffic whizzed by. While I was balancing on emergency mode with practicality and calm—a thing I do about an hour before I realize all the could have beens and go to pieces—she said she had already strapped the hood down, was looking through the sharded windshield and heading back home for another car. I had time to think about the could have beens and how it must have felt to have been the driver: SCARY!
I was not feeling upset or disappointed or anything that I could locate, beside gratitude that no other cars were involved and no one died (especially BD). I think I was in some level of shock, not wishing to feel an additional layer of life challenges. AD’s illness required a live-in-the-now lifestyle and I was working hard at being good at it. BD was a good driver. I was grateful and not surprised that she managed so well.
When BD arrived, we got to work, finished the task and headed home in what had been the old faithful station wagon. We drove slowly, carefully and quietly so as not to disturb our querulous hearts. Once at home, we made the insurance call, took care of whatever business was in front of us and had lunch. It was later on, when I went out to the garage that I saw the car…really saw it! My heart began to sag as I took it in and realized what it must have felt like to have this big piece of metal suddenly fly up and toward, like a determined bird of prey. We talked about it then…the what ifs and the could have beens and the would have beens. BD had been cool and competent during the attack: emergency mode.
So if the latch was working on giving way, and would have eventually done so regardless of weather, what I ask, would I have done had it let loose while I was driving? I’m pretty sure I would not have been competent or cool. The possible scenarios are unnerving. I do not believe in pre-destination or anything that leaves the relevance of God out of the picture. So I take this experience to my heart and do not dissect or analyze it. God’s grace prevailed. I don’t need a reason. God has called me by name and has not let the river overcome me….once again.
Tonight we took the poor, dear car to the body shop. It has a date with the insurance claims adjuster. They will tell us and we will say yes. Weeks from now Dear Car will be ready to roll and so will we. Grace again and again.
