Lenten Thoughts #6

I first heard Otis Taylor on the Blues radio station, while I was running around doing boring errands.  I pulled off the road to write down his name, then bought a CD as soon as I got home.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Mr. Otis Taylor, singing "Resurrection Blues."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxdV23m_OxQ


Preach it, Brother!

Amen.

Lenten Thoughts #4

A friend pointed out the inevitable gray areas between the depraved Monsanto and my organic breakfast.

What do we make of the fact that so many of our corporations--even those evil ones doing things like surreptitiously supporting violence, or exploiting child laborers--are owned by their employees, not by monstrously wealthy individuals?  In the current climate of ratings-grabbing political dramas, often concocted for no other reason than to get non-news on the airwaves, we are bombarded with eloquent, skewed, sweeping statements telling us that corporations are of Satan, or of God; that taxes on the wealthy help the poor, or hurt the poor; that organized labor works, or doesn't.  It's an us-and-them world, we're told, the gaps growing between the classes, the middle class disappearing entirely.  We're divided into haves and have-nots, educated and uneducated, Republican and Democrat, rural and urban, 99% and 1%.  Especially in an election year, it's tough to figure out what to accept.  Spin is everything.

I will remain a bleeding heart liberal with socialist leanings--this whoopie cat* can't change her bobtail.  But I feel uneasy about our American politics, especially after reading of the fictional Little Bee, whose village had to be destroyed in order to get at the oil underneath--and the oil underneath had to be extracted to power vehicles like the four I insure.

Jesus made a difference in his world, a world as topsy-turvy as ours.  Can we follow him?  How?  What does grace look like today, right now?

Us and them?  It's really just us.  Now what?

*For those of you not from southern Illinois, a whoopie cat is a wildcat.  Some people claim a whoopie cat is a cougar, or puma--a mountain lion--but most of us think a whoopie cat is just a bobcat.

Lenten Thoughts #3

Last night my book group discussed Chris Cleave's novel Little Bee, the story of a Nigerian girl caught in the strife caused when oil is discovered under her village.  The story is told from two points of view:  Little Bee, the 14 year old heroine forced to flee the violence of the oil wars ravaging her home; and Sarah, the self-centered English journalist whose life becomes intertwined with Little Bee's one fateful afternoon.

It's a novel worth reading for many reasons, so I won't spoil it.

Our discussion included the uncomfortableness we all feel when we come face to face with our comfort, with our privilege.  Which is, of course, borne on the broken backs of girls like Little Bee.  So here we were, this group of book-loving middle-aged women associated one way or another with the university.  This group--I know, having been a member for 20 years--gives.  These are generous-spirited women who volunteer, organize, teach, donate, walk, run, care.  One line of discussion involved helping AIDS orphans; another looked at the environmental issues associated with oil; a third dealt with food, simply eating and eating simply.  We talked about migrant labor, illegal immigration, fair trade coffee.  All in the comfort of a palatial home in one of the most expensive neighborhoods, to which we all drove in reliable, often luxury vehicles.  You get the point, no need to belabor the obvious.  We are good women, liberal with money and kindness, aware of our plenty and possessed of the deep desire to help others.

And yet.

I am tempted to quote Jesus about always having the poor with us, or to point out that Jesus mingled with rich, poor, Roman, Jew, political, apolitical, oppressed, oppressor.  These things are true.  And yet.

I am uneasy posting this, because I don't mean or want to offend anyone.  We really do try to do right, we who read things entitled "Lenten Thoughts #3," we who help AIDS orphans and buy locally roasted fair trade coffee and grow our own herbs.  I wouldn't accuse us of complacency.

And yet.

We must strive to take on the "baddies."  The oil companies who finance wide-scale violence and corruption.  The government insiders who wheel and deal so that our luxury can be maintained.  And yes, I'm going to say it, the utility companies that kill our sons through negligence.

Lenten Thoughts #2

I promised to work on that preachy thing, so today's entry is a simple story that shows God's sense of humor.  Out of the mouths of babes, to the ears of listening adults:

The kids were playing Follow the Leader, with three year old Joey in charge.  Every child marched dutifully behind,  doing whatever Joey did.  He'd raise his fists, they'd raise theirs; he'd skip, they'd skip; he'd whoop, they'd whoop.  Only being kids, they got bored.  Quickly.  One by one, the other children dropped out to follow other pursuits, but Joey marched happily along--until he realized that no one was behind him anymore.  Furious, red in the face, hands on hips, the three year old leader confronted his backslid flock: "Hey, what happened to you people?  You messed up all the following!"

This is actually a true story, not a churchy anecdote from a canned sermon.  The teacher was Donna Carloss Williams, a university professor now who at the time worked in a preschool.  The child's adult-style announcement struck her as hilarious and wise.

I once bought a bottle of wine with the brand name "Herding Cats."

Do you suppose that's how Jesus felt with his disciples?  With us?

[Thanks to Pastor Keith Williams of Eaton United Methodist Church for sharing Donna's story.]

Lenten Thoughts #1

It is Lent, that season of the liturgical year when we are to reflect, repent, retreat into a private God-space.  This year I intend to post a few times a week throughout Lent, with the hope that writing Lenten Thoughts By the Number will help me to center.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, a special day in my view for many reasons, the most important of which is that my father, Bert Odell Bishop, died on Ash Wednesday in 2009.  He actually died on 2/25/09, but it was Ash Wednesday, and that matters.

So, Daddy and Lent.  Well, he was raised Baptist in a little southern Illinois church.  Lent wasn't especially important to Daddy, due largely to the fact that he was born in 1917, making him 12 when the Depression hit.  For southern Illinois, as for much of the South, "Somebody told us Wall Street fell/But we were so poor, we couldn't tell" (Alabama's "Song of the South").  Going without, sacrificing, was so much a part of life he didn't need a special reminder from on high.  Daddy later completed a Master's degree, with work toward a Ph.D., but at 13 he had to drop out of school to work.  Sacrifice.  Doing without.  Just part of life, shrug it off and move on.  The early experience in Daddy's view exempted him from the practice of giving something up for Lent.

When I was little, I saw Ash Wednesday as belonging to the Catholics.  Now, many United Methodist churches offer Ash Wednesday services, but I don't remember them in my youth.  Lent, however, we did.  The altar vestments were purple, the mood penitent.  We sang hymns like "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," words from the Latin, music by Bach.  Impressive, even without a pipe organ.

Juxtaposing my dad's life with Lent is likely interesting only to me, but it does help me to reflect on sacrifice.  The 40 days are modeled after Jesus' time in the wilderness, when he resisted temptation while sacrificing comfort.  For most of us, that translates to giving up something we like, coffee or cigarettes or beer or chocolate.  Or maybe we add on something, like reading from classic theologians, or increasing our time in prayer--or writing more regular blog entries.  A little artificial, perhaps, but still the act of reflective, penitent souls.

Daddy didn't do Lent, but he did life.  Jesus calls us to do both.

This first of the series reads a bit preachy.  I promise not to do much of that!

Creativity and Cats

In the writing workshops I so love to attend, we often discuss the terms "creative nonfiction" and "memoir."  Generally speaking, as only a bunch of word-nerds could, we make quite a case for interpreting our memories through our imaginations.  This post is like that.  It didn't happen exactly like this, but in some important ways, this story is true.  Here's to memory, creativity, and whoopie cats.  And here's to Hardin County, with its beauty and its blemishes.

Riding alone was one of the joys of my adolescence, an escape from the hell of high school.  I rode Mo, a big, black, smooth-gaited, classy gelding with an old soul.  The land over Whoopie Cat Mountain, so named because legend had it that there were wildcats there (bobcats, Daddy always said, though others claimed to have seen pumas), offered sanctuary, peace, God.  It was also a great place to gallop long and hard, once you got up the hill, reason enough for me to make regular rides there.

On that crispy fall day in 1974, though, the trail offered a spicy side order with my solitude.

Mo stumbled back, maintaining eye contact with the snarling whoopie cat.  Aware of a million sensations—my quick intake of air, the horse's fear, the November leaves and pine needles rustling under our feet, the several miles separating us from the nearest people—I reached out to steady him.  The horse tossed his head and snorted, showing the whites of his eyes, as I instinctively grabbed the rein close to his head and swung up.  We crashed through the woods, adrenalin-fueled, oblivious to the spider webs, low-flung limbs, cockleburs, and still-potent poison ivy, heading for the pasture beyond.  I let Mo rest and graze until we both cooled off, then we headed toward a significantly wider trail with more visibility and little likelihood of a wildcat.

The rain started up, of course—it may never rain in southern California, but it sure does in southern Illinois—and we made for the sweet darkness of that old barn, the one with the hand-hewn feed troughs that as a child I pictured baby Jesus in.  When the rain slowed down, we took off again, this time toward civilization.

Crossing back over the meadow, I could hear it getting closer.  Mo stopped in his tracks, not even finishing his stride, ears pricked forward, head high.  I looked around frantically—could it be the same cat, here, in the field??  Then I saw her, an enormous doe, almost head to head with my 15 hand horse, so close I thought I heard her breathing.

Looking at my 17 year old self through the multifocal lens of memory, I question the whole holding-his-gaze thing, but I know for sure I saw a bobcat that day, and it definitely panicked my horse and me.  And while I might not have really heard the doe breathe, I remember the liquid beauty of her eyes—she was that close.

Another world
is not only possible, she's
on her way. Many of us won't
be here to greet her, but
on a quiet day,
if you listen carefully, you
can hear her breathing.
(Arundhati Roy)

Mother's Day Musing

My mother was a beautiful woman, slender and strong and tall, especially in the 1930s and 40s, when women tended to be shorter than we are today.  She was also highly intelligent, well read, and sophisticated.  She attended Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, an elite private university, until the Depression forced her family into bankruptcy.  At Ursinus she studied languages (French and Latin), doing light housekeeping for a professor and his wife in exchange for room and board.  She was an excellent student, always.  My dad finished a Master's degree and taught high school English; he was certainly no slouch intellectually.  But it was our mother who insisted on high intellectual standards.  I remember when I was in 2nd grade, I volunteered to do a report on somebody famous, Lincoln maybe.  One of my classmates had done one, and the teacher seemed mightily impressed.  I wanted some of that praise, too, so I decided to do what he had done.  I got home all excited, pulled out the appropriate Book of Knowledge from the shelf, and started copying verbatim what was there.  When Mother asked me what I was doing, I explained the situation, and she sat down with me to help.  So far, so good.  But then she told me to put away the paper, told me that you can't copy a report from somebody else's work, and made me read the segment carefully.  Then she took away the Book of Knowledge and told me to put into my own words what I had read!  I was all kinds of aggravated—that wasn't what I wanted to do, I just wanted some easy praise at school!  I learned forcefully the meaning of "plagiarism," and as a university writing instructor, I have wished all second graders received the lesson I did that day.  Mother's response to my taking the easy way out was typical.  She was always encouraging, not irritable about it, but she simply insisted that we develop rigorous intellectual standards for ourselves.

Mother used big words all the time.  I remember that so clearly about her—she wasn't like my friends' moms.  Her elevated vocabulary was completely natural to her, like her proud carriage and grace.  She was a humble, self-deprecating, shy woman, so there was never a feeling that she thought she was "all that" as the kids say now.  She simply loved words and shared that love with us all.  She read to us, classic works like Tom Sawyer, A Christmas Carol, and The Secret Garden, stopping as necessary to explain nuances and big words to my little sister and me (to the irritation of the older kids, who were exasperated with our ignorance).

Daddy always credited Mother with getting him through his college days, and to his death, he remained somewhat bemused and surprised that God had blessed him with this beautiful, sophisticated, classy woman to share his life with.  My dad was a wonderful character in his own right, but this is a Mother's Day tribute, and he really did feel grateful and a little unworthy of my mother with her well-connected family and cultivated mind.

My mother was the youngest of three; her brother and sister as well as all their progeny were Ivy League educated.  Only Mother was still dependent when the Depression crept into her insulated and privileged world.  Her father, an inventor and public servant, had worked with Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was Governor of New York.  Among the items auctioned with the family’s other treasures was an armchair that had been in the Governor’s Mansion, a gift from FDR.

My mother went from student to working girl with her characteristic grace, landing a good job in downtown Philadelphia.  In 1942, she met a sailor assigned to Philadelphia to outfit a new warship—my dad, a country boy from southern Illinois who had dropped out of school at 14 in order to help support his family.  Their backgrounds could not have been more different.   Her family warned her that “nothing good could come out of Little Egypt,” but my mother was as captivated by Daddy’s simple goodness as he was by her sophistication.  He was always a little in awe of Mother’s intellect and education, and she was drawn to his authentic integrity.

By the time Daddy retired from the Navy in 1956, he had completed a G.E.D. and was therefore eligible for the new G.I. Bill.  He and his East Coast bride moved to dinky little Carterville, Illinois, near Daddy’s roots but far from Mother’s, and he enrolled in college.  Mother helped him with his classes, managed the finances and kids, and time marched on.

I don’t remember Mother’s Day as a big deal, really.  We never went out to eat or anything.  Sometimes we gave cards and gifts made at school or church, but Hallmark and Madison Avenue didn’t hold much sway in rural southern Illinois.  I mostly remember warm weather and the smell of late spring.  My mother was not a gardener, but every Mother's Day we wore flowers to church.  Red roses for us kids, signifying that our mother was living, and white peonies for Mother and Daddy, signifying that their mothers had passed on.  Now this was in southern Illinois, where the roses bloom around Mother's Day, and we had a lovely bush with small blooms.  We'd sing loudly, "Mother, Mother, Mother, pin a rose on me!"  I never did know where that came from, but we sang it every year on Mother's Day, and cut little red roses to wear on our church clothes.  Mother and Daddy, however, weren't quite so lucky in their floral apparel.  We had some peony bushes out front, a couple of which had white flowers, so they'd scrounge around and try to find a small-ish blossom to wear.  Well, peonies even at their very best are big, showy, gaudy divas of the flower world, and they bloom before the roses do, so they were always well past their prime by Mother's Day, brownish, shedding petals, attracting ants.  It never occurred to any of us to look further than the peony bushes for a white flower, though, so Mother and Daddy would search for the least-sad looking, smallest blooms they could find, and thus clad in our flowers we'd head to the Rosiclare United Methodist Church, six miles away.  By the time we got to church, the roses were droopy and the peonies had shed their few shriveled petals.  I have no idea why we persisted with this silly ritual every year, but we did.  In a way, it does shine a light into Mother's character.  For all her aristocratic upbringing, she had a lighthearted approach to life, embracing the moments, relishing God's world in all its funny little foibles.

Happy Mother’s Day, Vera Mildred Hay Bishop.