Welcome to Monticello, now synonymous with broken buses
Like Monticello. That’s where the bus broke down. It’s so easy to mentally go back to those broken down places.
But M is also for Moving On. It may be easy to go back, but it’s also important to move on.
M is for Mirrors, because reflection is important.
Frio River from the balcony
M is for Meals, each one a sumptuous feast at Laity Lodge. More than the food, though, is the sharing of stories that happens over a meal — telling the tales of broken down buses or lives, and finding peace and acceptance even when the whole story is told.
Dining at Laity (photo by Kristen Peterson)
M is for the Moon. Its light is merely a reflection of the sun’s light. I don’t want to be corny about it, but my friends also reflect the Son’s light for me, and that’s very precious. Because sometimes the night is dark, and the only light we can see is a reflected one.
The moon at Laity Lodge
And M is for each Moment and the Miracle of living life — because each breath we take should no more amazing than that first breath from the womb.
Each blade of grass, each rock piled on rock, each bird at the feeder, each tear, each friend, each mountain, each sunset, each lift-off, each landing, each ( fill-in-the-blank ) — they are all miracles.
We lives a series of miracles most of which escape our notice.
Life is rich. Magnificent, in fact, when we choose to embrace it.
Laity Lodge cacti. The cactus “protects itself against danger, but it harms no other plant…” (from “The Power of One” by Bryce Courtney
L is for Love in Action.
Well did Monty Python choose a rabbit — the Rabbit of Caerbannog — to protect.
The retreat at Laity Lodge was put on by the Rabbit Room, an online community modeled after Lewis and Tolkien’s Inkling community that met in an Oxford pub in a room called The Rabbit Room.
The denizens of this online community now refer to themselves as rabbits. Unlike many online communities, Rabbit Roomers have multiple opportunities for flesh-and-blood meetings via events like Hutchmoot, the Laity Lodge retreat, and concerts.
A group rabbits yesterday turned into Rabbits of Caerbannog when I shared with them that “Joan Jackson” has continued to comment on my blog, although now all her comments go to my spam folder.
Below is their response:
It has come to our attention that repeated attempts have been made to shame and silence Sally, the author of this blog.
It is sad that bitterness could turn into something so consuming. If this weren’t such a damnable waste of time and resources, it would almost be comic that two elderly people would spend their last golden decades on planet earth acting like silly teenage girls. How foolish the human heart grows while seeking revenge. If there weren’t so much to be pitied about this sort of behavior, it would be laughable.
However, because this problem has persisted, Sally’s friends have decided to take action. Below is our plan.
First, we have offered to manage the spam folder for this blog. From this point forward, Sally will appoint a friend to manage her spam. The new manager of this folder will scan the first few lines of every message and immediately delete anything slanderous. No matter what is written in those messages, we will assume every single word to be false. We will not be shocked, and we will not be shaken. Anyone cowardly and immature enough to send anonymous messages over the internet has immediately lost all credibility in our eyes.
Secondly, as a team, we are committing to doing one act of goodness and grace in the world for every negative message received. For each attempt these attackers make to shame our friend, we will make something beautiful or healing for someone in need. Every venomous or poisonous post will result in tenderness and generosity being carried out by a team of friends who knows the wonderful woman that this blogger really is.
Hatred will be turned to laughter. Shame will be turned to healing. Darkness will be turned to light. And all of this will be done in a manner that not only turns evil to good, but that multiplies goodness exponentially. We will do this because this is what God does with broken places; he turns them around and makes them beautiful.
We praise God for this opportunity to stand in the gap for our dear friend. We also hope that a strong and definite stance will help our friend’s abusers move on with life. We stand about her as a shield, accepting her as she was, loving her as she is, and excited about who she is becoming.
Sincerely,
Friends of the Blogger
Like the Rabbit of Caerbannog, they will stand as my protectors.
Unlike the Rabbit of Caerbannog, their actions will not be destructive, but healing.
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:
Car ride to Binghamton
Bus trip to NYC
First bus to Monticello that broke down
Second bus that safely delivered us to Port Authority
Waiting at LaGuardia
Shuttle to LaGuardia
Waiting in LaGuardia
Flight to Charlotte
Hurry through Charlotte airport from one plane directly to the boarding line for the next
Flight to San Antonio
Shuttle to hotel
Night in hotel
Ride to car rental agency
Meeting up with friends
Drive to Laity Lodge
Stop for Texas barbecue
Time at Laity Lodge
Rest
Refreshment
Music
Laughter
Solitude
Fellowship
Drive back to San Antonio
Flight to O’Hare
Traversing the tunnels of O’Hare
Flight to Syracuse
Ride home
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Vortex of Fire (photograph by Kristen Kopp)
I wish it were so easy to rid our country of hate.
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.
Driving in the Frio River. (photograph by Kristen Kopp)
We can sit on the balcony to look at the river and listen to river.
Frio River from the balcony
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.”
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.
Caterpillar down the center aisle
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.
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.
Wouldn’t you know it? Yesterday I discovered the A to Z Blogging Challenge for April, where for the month of April the challenge is to blog every day except Sunday, and use the letters of the alphabet to mark off the days.
April 1st, A, I decided could be Assistance, since that’s what the story was about. Today, I could say B is for Bus, but I semi-promised no more bus stories.
So B is for Bluff, more precisely, Circle Bluff.
I’m no longer telling a chronological story; it’s an alphabetical one, but I hope you’ll bear with me.
The destination for all my travels was a place called Laity Lodge in the wilds of Texas. I’ll have to come back to my time at LaGuardia and Charlotte airports, my short stay in San Antonio, my first real Texas barbecue, and even my drive through the river to get to Laity Lodge.
Let me simply say that Laity Lodge is pretty close to heaven on earth. Pretty. Darn. Close.
I heard someone say “Friggin'” there, so I knew it wasn’t heaven. Still.
A group of us went for a hike on Friday. The fact that it felt like it was straight up half the time was a testament to how out of shape I am.
It was up, but not straight. Straight up is a cliff.
And straight down is the direction I looked once we were up on the bluff.
I wasn’t alone past the rocks.
Apparently there was a sign — “Don’t go past these rocks.”
I honestly didn’t notice the sign.
I just saw all these other people out there and climbed over the rocks.
The view was spectacular. I kept looking at this little out-jutting ledge, thinking how fun it would be sit on it, and dangle my legs, and really enjoy the view, but when I looked back at our trusty hike leader, she was literally holding her heart in her chest, like it might fall out from the palpitations we all were causing.
So I just took a picture of the ledge.
I considered sitting here.
Because, really, I never got that close to the edge. See?
Me, taking pictures of the view. (photo by Kristen Kopp)
And the truth is, the farther away from the edge, the less spectacular the view.
In fact, Evel Knievel said, “Where there is little risk, there is little reward.” I remember watching his daredevil stunts when I was a kid.
But he is also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of “most bones broken in a lifetime”. 433, to be exact.
So I risked a little, but not too much, and loved the view.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 