Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
K is for Kindred Spirit and Kindness and a friend whose name begins with K who embodies both of those.
I don’t want to embarrass her by saying her name so I’m just posting this embarrassing photograph from a memorable segment of my trip to San Antonio…
J is for Journey.
The bigger story of our lives is constantly being retold is smaller stories every day.
For example, my journey to Laity Lodge was series of steps which I could break down thus:
Shuttle to LaGuardia
Each step has at least one story, complete with plot and interesting characters.
Sometimes I’m running. Sometimes I’m waiting.
Sometimes the bus breaks down or the flight is late.
Sometimes richness surrounds me and I am a partaker in a great feast.
Sometimes desert solitude surrounds me.
Sometimes my companion is a friend who laughs easily and shares their story.
Sometimes my companion is a stranger drinking screwdrivers to soothe the anxiety of flying.
Although I may look back on those four days as one trip, they really were a series of smaller stages, interactions, minutia. High points, low points, tension, and joy.
Peter Guber said it this way:
Every journey that is successful has culs-de-sac and speed bumps. I carry a wisdom gene through my life through the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Life is a journey. I’m glad I like traveling.
J is for Jonathan, Jonathan Rogers, to be exact.
Jonathan Rogers is a writer, speaker, teacher, and Flannery O’Connor expert.
For whatever reason, I am prone to say the most awful things to him — insults and degradations.
Like this past fall, when I saw him in Nashville, and he was talking about Georgia, a state dear to him because he grew up there.
“Every time we drive through Georgia,” I told him, “my kids complain because it smells so bad.” (There must be a rendering plant or something near I-95.)
I realized how awful that was as soon as I said it. I looked around to see if the words had maybe come from someone else’s mouth, but, no, I was the only one standing there.
He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “Do you sit at home thinking of ways to insult me?” he finally asked.
No, Jonathan, those insults seem to come quite naturally to me.
I knew that Jonathan would be at Laity Lodge and felt the anxiety rising. I would not insult him this go-round. I gritted my teeth in firm resolve.
I’ve been the recipient of enough rude statements, mostly regarding my family size.
“Again??!??!” — on seeing me pregnant for the 6th, 7th, or 8th time.
“Don’t you know what causes that?” — generally followed by guffaws and elbows to the ribs.
“You have too many children.” — a statement to which I responded, “Which one should I get rid of?”
“You got your girl. You can stop now.” — after Helen was born, my first girl after three boys, as if having a girl had been a goal.
But, Jonathan — I don’t know why unkind words roll off my tongue in his presence. And I don’t like that about me.
“Really,” I told a friend, “I may just try to avoid him.”
When I saw that Jonathan wasn’t present at dinner or the first talk, I actually felt a little sad, because these were his people far more than my people. I’m an interloper, but they are all too gracious to expel me.
The next morning I got up early, my usual routine. When I went to get coffee, two other people were also getting morning beverages. I stopped partway through the doorway — it was Jonathan Rogers and his wife.
“Good morning, Sally,” he smiled. Did I mention the fact that he is nice and I am not? “I’d like you to meet my wife.”
We said our hellos.
I think I was polite.
As it turns out, his wife is delightful. One of my favorite conversations from the whole retreat was an honest vulnerable breakfast we shared.
I liked her so much that I braved a Facebook conversation with Jonathan to get her email address.
I may have insulted him by asking for it.
“This happens every time I take her anywhere,” he wrote. “I write for the Rabbit Room for what, 8 years? One weekend and she is more popular than me.”
Sorry, Jonathan.
I is for the Inklings.
Ralph Wood, in his first talk at Laity Lodge, spoke about the Inklings, that group of men who met in an English pub to discuss life and literature, and whose best-known members were C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
I scribbled in my notes, “Friendship is the only love that when divided is not diminished,” and looked for the “real” quote later. I found it, in C. S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves,
“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets… Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, ‘Here comes one who will augment our loves.’ For in this love ‘to divide is not to take away.”
Several years ago, when my life journey had taken a steep uphill turn, I summoned a group of Friendlings. We didn’t meet in a pub, but rather, through the magic of the interwebs, through social media and email.
Dr. Wood told us that The Lord of the Rings would not have happened without the constant encouragement of C. S. Lewis. Sometimes I wonder how I would have fared without the constant encouragement of my Friendlings.
Like the Inklings, mine has been a group with some fluidity, but also with some mainstays. With them, I have not only shared the trials in my life, but also my joys and the mundane. They share the same with me.
Each of them brings a different perspective, but that only enriches me all the more.
They staunchly stand beside me when I am at my weakest.
They know me at my ugliest and still love me.
In turn, they have shared their sunshine and their dark times with me.
“I’m hurting today,” one might say, and I will stop what I am doing to pray and to reach out across hundred of miles to tell her that I love her.
Friendlings have been a safe place to share and to listen.
Dr. Wood said that we are all Inklings.
Some of us may not be literary types, with ink stains on our fingers, but I daresay we all have the capacity to love and be loved.
Everyone can wear some friend-stains on their heart.
H is for Hike.
Henri Nouwen said, “Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey.”
Friendship is the core of almost any journey — and it was true of my hike at Laity Lodge.
I know that I already mentioned the hike in my post, Bluff, but it really is a three chapter story for which I only told the middle chapter.
Chapter One — One mile hike up.
Chapter Two — Pretty view.
Chapter Three — One mile hike down.
While I loved the view, I think I loved the hiking part more. Because of the friendship aspect.
When we walk with someone, we learn something — about them and about ourselves.
On the way up, I walked with Dawn — Dawn-of-a-thousand-careers, also known as Dawn-of-the-mutual-friends.
Everyone has a story.
Everyone has a thousand stories.
As much as I love reading stories, I love hearing the stories. I love asking questions so I’m picturing it clearly in my mind. And hearing the rise and fall of the teller’s voice as they emphasize the words that are important in their telling of the story. I love seeing them smile when they tell the parts that make them smile, and bite their lip a little when they tell the parts that are hard.
I loved hearing Dawn’s stories on the way up. One of her stories involved running a marathon (or was it a half-marathon?) where she completed it by sheer will-power. She’s a strong woman.
What I learned about me while I was hiking with Dawn was that I don’t like to confess to my weaknesses.
I was running out of breath, going what felt like straight up. The gap between us and the next group of hikers grew larger and larger as we hiked slower and slower.
Darned if I would admit needing to rest though!
If Dawn could keep going, I could keep going.
Thankfully, she stopped.
“I need to catch my breath,” she said.
Benevolent me, I said, “No worries. I don’t mind waiting.”
What I meant to say was, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou.” gasp-gasp “Myheartispoundingoutofmychest.” gasp-gasp “I (gasp) need (gasp) a-rest, (gasp) too!”
On the hike down (which was much easier) I walked with a young woman named Kristen. Tall, beautiful, and with an enviable openness about her — she told me about her work, her church, her family. It hit me as we were talking that she is the same age as Philip, my oldest son.
I could be her mother, I whispered to myself, but the words flew away in the Texas wind.
I marveled at the fact that I had arrived at the enviable stage of life where I have friends, real friends, that span many generations, and I’m right smack dab in the middle of them.
It was a cosy feeling — not out of breath at all.
A hike with friendship at its core.
G is for Flannery O’Connor’s story that wasn’t called “The Good Guide.”
That’s not a typo.
She wrote a story called “The Artificial N——” — I can’t even bring myself to type the word — and her editor pleaded with her to change the title to “The Good Guide.” FO stood up for her title, saying it was the essence of the story.
At Laity Lodge, this story was the topic of Dr. Ralph Wood’s final talk for the retreat. It is a story of pride, betrayal, and grace.
As soon as Dr. Wood introduced the story, as soon as he said the word, as soon as he dropped that bomb, every heart turned toward the one man of color in our midst.
Every heart turned that way, I’m sure, though every eye politely stared straight ahead or focused on some speck on the floor.
He might as well have called a Jew to the front and offered to tattoo a number on his or her arm.
We are stung by certain words, by the sheer profanity of them, as we should be.
At the beginning of the retreat we were challenged to write two words on blocks of wood. One was to be the word that represents that thing that holds us back from our art. The other was to be a word that we would like to see eliminated from the English language.
I immediately knew my two words. I scrawled the first one onto a block, but couldn’t bring myself to write the second because, in my mind, it is such an awful word that it makes me want to throw up just to look at it.
I took a deep breath and finally scribbled it onto the block. Quickly, I laid the block face down on the sofa. I really didn’t want to see it.
Words can be such powerful things, can’t they?
Writing it down felt like I was empowering it, the last thing I ever wanted to do.
All those blocks were burned, though, in a vortex of fire on the last night.
The blocks were stacked on a potter’s wheel, doused with lighter fluid, and lit with the wheel spinning.
I wish it were so easy to rid our country of hate.
F is for Frio — as in the Frio River.
Every time I think about Laity Lodge and the Frio River, these words scroll across my mind – A river runs through it.
Because a river runs through the canyon and is such an integral part of the Laity experience.
We drive through the river to get to the lodge.
We can sit on the balcony to look at the river and listen to river.
Our view from the bluff looked down on the river and we could see how it wound its way through.
A river runs through it.
Years ago, I happened to catch the movie, A River Runs Through It, when it was shown on television. It is rare when I sit down to watch a whole movie unplanned, but something about it drew me. Something about it lingers, still today, in my heart.
Perhaps it was the mention of grace.
Perhaps it was the art, the stunning beauty of Montana.
Perhaps it was the human drama of a family and brothers and self-destructive behaviors and grace again.
Rivers run through our lives. They draw us together. We can stand in their waters side-by-side. We can feel their coolness and refreshment. We are washed clean in them.
Yes, it’s all grace.
Shall we gather at the river?
*****
“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them – we can love completely without complete understanding.”
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
E is for Empire Swimming and Easter.
As a swim coach, I thought it funny that I ended up on my first flight to Laity Lodge with a swim team. I didn’t mind. Swimmers are some of my favorite people in the whole world.
Especially when I get to overhear conversations like this —
Swimmer A: This is my first time flying. I hope I get a window seat.
Swimmer B: You know you can’t open the window, right?
I laughed, wondering if Swimmer A thought he could open the window and stick his hand out to zoom through the oncoming air.
When the plane took off, I thought of him again, especially when I got that giddy feeling that makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time as the wheels leave the ground.
Flying is such a miracle.
Over a hundred people crammed into a metal tube, with their suitcases and laptops and books — but somehow that heavy thing climbs into the sky.
I really do grin like a 10-year-old and get the watery eyes of a senior citizen at the moment of transformation from earthbound to air-born.
It happened to me again yesterday. Not the flying part, but the laughing/crying part.
Easter Sunday is, in my opinion, the most important Christian holiday. The crux of our faith lies in the truth that Jesus bore the penalty for our sins on the cross and then conquered death in His resurrection.
Churches around the world have traditions associated with Easter. Over the years we’ve attended churches with sunrise services, cardboard testimonies, hymn sings, dramas, and traditional liturgies. Each new way of celebrating offers a fresh look at an old but oh-so-beautiful story.
The church we currently attend closes with Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and a joyful procession of the children.
Curmudgeonly me, I said to Bud yesterday morning before church, “I’m ready to move on to something besides caterpillars and butterflies.”
I’ll blame it on the persistent headache I’ve had for the past week, but, more likely, I’m just a grump.
When the procession started, though, and the caterpillar came waddling up the center aisle, I felt that wheels-leaving-the-runway giddiness.
And when the children threw off the caterpillar shroud to reveal the butterflies, I confess, my eyes got a little watery.
As the procession continued with waving flags and ever larger butterflies, I was thankful for the joy that filled our sanctuary.
Because, if there was one thing I needed to be reminded of yesterday, it was joy.
Confetti-filled, silly-stringed, laugh-out-loud joy.
The kind where it doesn’t matter whether or not the window opens, because you can still feel the wheels leave the tarmac, and know that it’s a miracle, and that you’re being carried somewhere beyond, somewhere amazing.
Easter is that kind of amazing, pressed down, shaken over, overflowing.
The biggest miracle of them all.
For me.
D is for Dawn.
This post is about four Dawns — no, make that five. But where to begin?
Dawn #1 — For years, I have prayed for a friend named Dawn. I’ll call her Dawn-with-the-many-boys because this Dawn has four sons. Raising sons is the most fun job in the whole world. Boys possess a certain crazy energy that plays out in ways that most mothers never dream of — swords fights and jousting, damming creeks, and putting batteries down the drain. I speak from experience. Mothers of boys need prayer. So I pray for Dawn. Every day.
Dawn #2 — Several months ago, when I was praying for Dawn-with-the-many-boys, I felt this nudge to pray for another Dawn. I’ll call her Dawn-of-the-mutual-friends.
I felt a nudge – Pray for Dawn-of-the-mutual-friends.
“But I don’t even know her,” I countered.
Pray for her.
So I did.
Then she climbed into my car at the San Antonio airport. Unplanned. Yet, I wonder if it was. As her story unfolded to me, I realized how much she did need prayer. I felt both privileged and thankful that I could pray for her, and now in a more meaningful way.
Dawn #3 — For Lenten reading, I had chosen Elie Wiesel’s trilogy, Night, Dawn, and Day. High-schoolers across the country read Night, the story of Wiesel’s time in German concentration camps. Buchenwald, and Wiesel, are liberated at the end of Night.
But the story wasn’t over.
Dawn tells the story of a concentration camp survivor recruited by a Zionist group to fight in Palestine. Elisha, the main character, is called on to kill a man — an act that will forever change him.
“Elisha–” said the hostage.
I fired. When he pronounced my name he was already dead; the bullet had gone through his heart. A dead man, whose lips were still warm, had pronounced my name: Elisha.
I kept putting that scene next to this, from Night:
…The officer wielded his club and dealt him a violent blow to the head.
I didn’t move. I was afraid, my body was afraid of another blow, this time to my head.
My father groaned once more, I heard:
“Eliezer…”
… His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered.
And next to this, where a life is laid down, not taken:
“Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46)
I read Dawn a second time during my flights. I’m still wrestling with it.
Dawn #4 — I watched the sun rise every morning from a lonely place near Laity Lodge. In the daytime, I had bemoaned the telephone poles and wires stretching across this view. When I came home and looked at my photographs, though, I saw a cross, an empty cross, on a hill.
Dawn #5 —
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb… (Luke 24:1)
An empty tomb, an empty cross, a hard story that isn’t over yet, women who are dear to me.
Dawn, Dawn, and Dawn at dawn.
Music weaves its way through the fabric of the days at Laity Lodge.
The sessions begin and end with song, usually old hymns for which the hymnbook may only be half-necessary.
Like the time we sang, “Shall We Gather at the River.” I don’t really know all the verses to that one — just the chorus — so I used the hymnal. I got really confused, however, when the melody we sang didn’t match the music in front of me. It’s the plight of a music-reader to notice such things.
My favorite part of a concert is when the performer forgets their lyrics. At that moment, something shifts from a performance to a sharing of imperfections, from an act on a stage to a friend who is willing to open up and reveal some deeper truth about themselves.
At the concert on the last night at Laity Lodge, the musicians sang their songs, forgot a few lyrics, and then gave us the privilege of hearing some new material.
“You mind if I share a new song?”
No, no, we didn’t mind at all when both Andrew Peterson and Andy Gullahorn asked that question. It was a pleasure to be their guinea pigs.
At times, the vulnerability made me want to look away.
How hard it must be to expose fears and struggles — from a stage. A few lines from one new AP song —
I tried to be brave and I hid in the dark.
I sat in that cave and I prayed for a spark
To burn up all the pain that remained in my heart,
But the rain kept falling down.
AP also sang a song dedicated to his wife asking if they would survive and I ached inside for them. At that moment, I wished my husband were beside me so I could slide my hand into his warmer, larger hand, and feel the squeeze of reassurance.
Beauty lives in the hard places — and we need to be reminded of that.
We do survive.
And even those who don’t can experience new life in other ways.
Easter is especially a time to be mindful of that.
Out of our greatest grief comes our greatest joy.
Thanks for the concert and the reminders.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 