Category: A to Z Blogging Challenge

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

Q is for Quiet

Sally4 Comments

Silence is the absence of sound and quiet the stilling of sound. Silence can’t be anything but silent. Quiet chooses to be silent. It holds its breath to listen. It waits and is still.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

The other day I was talking with a friend in the driveway when a flash of blue caught both our eyes. We followed it to the upper branches of a sugar maple.

“It’s not a bluebird,” my friend said.

“No. I know this one,” I told him. “It’s an Indigo Bunting.” I knew this because one had flown into the glass of a window and lay stunned on our deck some years ago. I took this photo to identify it and wrote a less-than-titillating post about it called “Bleh“

Aren’t the blues stunning?

What has this to do with quiet? Well, my favorite time of day has long been early morning. I get up before the sun to sit with a cup of coffee, a book, and a journal. I need the alone time. I need the quiet time.

Of late, I’ve been using Merlin to identify the birds that join me one at a time in my early morning quiet.

The robin is nearly always first — and monopolizes the conversation. I laugh when it’s the first — you know, getting the worm and all. But it’s quickly joined by sparrows and vireos, wrens and woodpeckers.

And indigo buntings.

The other morning, the bunting was outside my window and I snapped this photo:

Years ago, I had held one, stunned, in my hand and later watched it fly away.

Every morning now, I hold my breath in quiet and listen to the birds, remembering the resurrection of one, and marveling at life.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

P is for Patriotism

Sally5 Comments

True patriots are no longer champions of Democracy, Communism, or anything like that but champions of the Human Race.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

My father was a man who was a champion of the Human Race. He dedicated his life caring for people.

I’m using my recuperation to sort through some of the stuff at my parents’ house. Today I came across a small collection of books that are Class Reunion Reports from Harvard Medical School. My father graduated from there in 1955.

In each reunion report, the class members submit updates on their careers and their personal lives. I’ve been leafing through each one to find what my father said.

In 1980, he said this:

We look back on the last 25 years with great satisfaction and pride in our family and their accomplishments, and with gratitude for having had an opportunity to be contributing members of our communities, for having the acquaintance of so many wonderful people, and for having witnessed such exciting change in our nation and our world. I still believe in the Red Sox, the United States of America, and the inherent goodness of our fellow man.

My father lived those words.

He died with the last Red Sox game of 2019 on the television in his bedroom. It was fitting.

He loved this country. He served in the US Army. Every year he would faithfully watch our local Memorial Day parade down Main Street, and stand at attention for the 21-gun salute. It was a huge honor when he was asked to Marshall the local 4th of July parade. He proudly walked (no convertible for him!) the whole parade route in his dress uniform.

And, he truly believed in the inherent goodness of our fellow man — although our current president gave my father a challenge there.

One of my funniest Emergency Room moments with my father was in 2017 or 2018. The staff was trying to assess his cognitive status by asking the usual questions:

  • Do you know where you are? (“Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, NY”)
  • Do you know what day of the week it is? (I can’t remember whether his response was correct or not. That’s not really a fair question for older people who have less of schedule to mark their days.)
  • Do you know who the president of the United States is? (“I refuse to say that awful man’s name.”)

I think that makes him a patriot and a champion of the Human Race.

And cognitively aware.


A to Z Blogging Challenge

O is for Old Age

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… if your spirit is still more or less intact, one of the benefits of being an old crock is that you can enjoy again something of what it’s like being a young squirt. …if part of the pleasure of being a child the first time around is that you don’t have to prove yourself yet, part of the pleasure of being a child the second time round is that you don’t have to prove yourself any longer. You can be who you are and say what you feel, and let the chips fall where they may.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

My mother had dementia. Her filters fell away. She said things that I never imagined her saying. Once we were in a church to watch a concert. The woman who sat in the pew ahead of us was morbidly obese. My mother leaned toward me, but spoke in a loud voice, “That woman is FAT! Fat, fat, fat!” I cringed. Filters help us be kind. Not every thought we think needs to be said.

But there is a also a confidence that comes with age, as Buechner describes.

Young squirts and old crocks have so much in common. Intersecting arcing lines on a giant graph of life.

My body is feeling its age these days. I’m scheduled for a total hip replacement this coming week. In the meantime I traveled to Virginia for my middle daughter’s college graduation. Because of my hip, I rode with my oldest daughter’s family instead of doing the 8-hour drive myself.

My one-year old granddaughter is just starting to walk. Her favorite way right now is holding onto her mom’s index fingers for confidence. Sometimes she can be coaxed to let go and take a few toddling steps before she drops down to crawl or turns her head to look for her mom.

I, on the other hand, struggle with my first steps getting out of the car. It’s such a simple thing to do that I have taken for granted all these years. Now I pivot on my butt to get my legs out the car door and slide forward to stand the way the physical therapist instructed me. After two hours of sitting though, my hip protests. The pain is sharp and intense. I press my lips together and grit my teeth to stand and walk.

My daughter asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I reply tersely and mush on. In some ways I feel like the surgery can’t come soon enough.

My granddaughter and I are both learning to walk.

After the Baccalaureate service yesterday, the college president had all the graduating students stand on the grass of the quad lining the sidewalk. After saying a few words of encouragement to these young people embarking on a new journey, she had them all step onto the sidewalk, symbolic of moving on to whatever comes next.

Another first step. Exciting, fresh, new, a little scary.

That’s how I feel about this hip surgery. I won’t even stay overnight in the hospital. They’ll get me up and have me walk that same day. Exciting, fresh, new, a lot scary.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

N is for News

Sally12 Comments

We’re all of us caught up in our own small wars, both hot and cold. We have our crimes and passions, our failures and successes. …

Maybe there’s nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening or so and think it over, try to figure it out if we can, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of our day. Where it is taking us. Where it is taking the people we love. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

The W3 prompt this week is to write Waltz Wave, which is a single, unrhymed stanza of 19 lines with the following syllable count: 1–2–1–2–3–2–1–2–3–4–3–2–1–2–3–2–1–2–1. The poem’s theme should be “Strength and Vulnerability.” (Thanks, Suzanne!)

This probably doesn’t totally match the theme, but it sprang from watching/reading/listening to the news, so I’m putting it here with the Buechner quote, and giving it the title of “News”

A
Power-
ful
Person
Blusters on
Without
A
Shred of
Awareness
How his actions
Impact the
Country.
I’d
Rather
Read about
Leaders
Who
Really
Care

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

M is for Money

Sally2 Comments

There are people who use up their entire lives making money so they can enjoy the lives they have entirely used up. Jesus said that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Maybe the reason is not that the rich are so wicked they’re kept out of the place but that they’re so out of touch with reality they can’t see it’s a place worth getting into.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

My father used to tell me that I was the richest person he knows. Then he would add with a smile, “and maybe someday you’ll have money.”

Honestly, money has never been a motivator for me.

Is that because I’ve always had enough? Maybe, but…

Having enough money may mean

  • prioritizing
  • discerning wants vs. needs
  • delaying gratification
  • budgeting
  • living within one’s means

I was a stay-at-home mom. I used to joke with people that my husband and I had a good arrangement — he earned the money and I spent it. That’s truly how it worked.

I did little things to bring in extra cash: I baked cookies and sold them to a local business. I coached swimming. I officiated high school and college swim meets.

We also saved on spending. I made Christmas gifts or shopped thrift stores for them. We rarely ate out. Clothes were passed down.

I look back on all of it and see what my father saw. We were so rich.

During the process of divorce, our financial arrangement came back to haunt me. So many people cautioned me on “looking out for myself.” I hated being in that position.

But I will say today that I am still rich in the ways that matter to me.

Earlier this week a Russian couple brought me some chocolates from Russia as a thank you for something I did for them last summer. Another woman brought me a bag of thumbprint cookies from an upscale bakery in Boston — as a thank-you.

I guess sweets are a form of riches — but, for me, it’s the sentiment behind them that I appreciate.

On a regular basis different people poke their head into my office just to say hi or to thank me or to give me some little something. I have so many cards and chachkies on my bulletin board. Last week I came in to find flowers on my desk.

I am rich indeed.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

L is for Loneliness

Sally2 Comments

To be lonely is to be aware of an emptiness which it takes more than people to fill. It is to sense that something is missing which you cannot name.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Being alone and being lonely are two very different things.

The worst kind of loneliness is what I think of as “Rudolphian” — as is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He isn’t accepted for who he is because he’s different. As such, they never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. That’s the lonely-in-a-crowd loneliness. It’s very much a what’s-wrong-with-me loneliness.

At the same time, introverts recognize their own need for solitude. Being alone is a place to regroup and recharge. It’s a place to gather thoughts.

Thomas Merton said, “As soon as you are really alone, you are with God.”

Being lonely can come from being excluded, but being alone can lead to the place of recognizing how included we are in something far bigger than anything we can imagine.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

K is for Knowledge

Sally3 Comments

Knowing something or somebody isn’t the same as knowing about them. More than just information is involved. …When you really know a person or a language or a job, the knowledge becomes part of who you are. It gets into the bloodstream.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

BUT, Mr. Buechner, what if the person that I am learning about and that I am getting to know is me?

It can’t get into my bloodstream, because it is my bloodstream!

I read a piece by Dorothy Day yesterday that said, “‘How can you see Christ in people?’ … It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope…”

How can I see Christ in me? It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love. It is an act of hope.

It has been a rough few weeks months years. My divorce is final. The papers came in the mail this week. It makes me question everything. How well did I know this person to whom I was married for over forty years? I knew about him, but did I really know him? Did he really know me?

I realize that I don’t even know me — but I’m working on it.

I realize, though, too, what grounds me. It is faith. It is acts of faith, constantly repeated.

I’m extending the A-to-Z Challenge into May. Maybe even June and July – we’ll see how long this takes.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

J is for Justice

Sally4 Comments

Justice does not preclude mercy. It makes mercy possible. … Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

I didn’t see this coming, the way a Buechner book would become a backdrop to commentary on the state of our country — but it has.

If you’ve never read anything by Frederick Buechner, let me tell you a little about him. He is a Presbyterian minister and the author of 39 books. He is witty, funny, insightful, and ultimately so very kind. So kind. One of his last books is titled: The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life. I haven’t yet read it, but I think it sums him up.

I loved this quote on justice when I read it. I can picture Justice and Mercy sitting on a teeter-totter, balancing each other. Yet here, under Trump 2, Justice has leapt from the see-saw, leaving Mercy to crash to the ground with a teeth-jarring thud.

The news is on in the background as I write — a mistake, I know. I’m semi-addicted these days. I can’t look away, even though I know I should. What’s going on in this country is neither just nor merciful. There’s no sense of poetry in anything that’s going on.

I have to confess that I didn’t see what’s going on in our country coming either. I counted on the balance of power in our government and the work of God in people’s hearts.

Yet, here we are, withholding food, drugs, and aid from people in need. Sending aid workers to Myanmar in the wake of a disaster — and then firing them! Canceling student visas and sending them back to their home country, some of them weeks shy of their graduation. Punishing, punishing, punishing anyone who disagrees or has disagreed with this administration.

Almighty and most merciful God
Where are You?
The sky is turning black
As are the hearts of my countrymen
Must we sit in a tomb for three days
Before there is a resurrection?
Or is insurrection on the horizon?
My God, My God — why have You forsaken us?

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it — that 2000 years ago, the Jewish people were looking for an insurrection to free them from Roman rule, and they got a resurrection instead.

What does God have in store for us?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Writing

I is for Imagination

Sally2 Comments

If you want to know what loving your neighbor is all about, look at them with more than just your eyes.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

I recently started a writer’s group at the senior program where I work.

We’ve had two meetings, but only one person — the same person — has come each time. The last time we met I was feeling so overwhelmed with life that we hardly talked about writing until at the end when we were talking about all that’s going on these days. Something clicked in my brain.

“This,” I said, making a grandiose gesture with my arms to indicate the world in which we live, “is why writing is important. Writing helps us understand.”

It was at just such a time as this that I started this blog, although it wasn’t the country in turmoil. It was my mother’s dementia. I was having a hard time processing it.

Just like I’m having a hard time processing what’s going on today.

Writing taps into something — surely there is a word for it — that unravels the knot.

I think it has to do with imagination — with seeing with more than our eyes.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

H is for Holocaust

Sally7 Comments

It is impossible to think about it. It is impossible not to think about it. Nothing in history equals the horror of it. … Many were old men. Many were small children. Many were women. They were charged with nothing except being Jews. …

That many of the people who took part in the killings were professing Christians, not to mention many more who knew about the killings but did nothing to interfere, is a scandal which the Church of Christ perhaps does not deserve to survive.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Moving on in this (un)happy week in American history, I read this by Buechner.

I have been haunted by the images from the El Salvadoran prison and the young mother whose husband is there. A clerical error. Oops. American Christians should be hanging their heads in shame. This is not what Jesus calls us to do.

I know, I know — I heard J.D. Vance called him a vicious gang member and human trafficker. Today, as I write this, the Supreme Court has ordered the US goverment to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, yet the DoJ can’t even say where he is. No one is doubling down on the vicious gang story anymore.

Also, no one in the government has apologized to my knowledge. Probably no one ever will.

Go on — look at the photos from the prison and tell me that it doesn’t turn your stomach. Okay — it’s not old men, women, and children, but’s it’s still wrong. This is what we as a country have done.