Rain of Grace

     Our church recently held its second annual "Day of Grace" tea, in memory of Grace Marvin, who truly lived up to her name.  I was asked to bring a poem to read but was frustrated, being a very literal person, that none of my writings were specifically about grace.  So I decided to write a grace poem, but it has been a slow process, grinding out one line at a time.  Part of the difficulty was that same literal thinking. It is important not to misrepresent a doctrine as important as grace, but I was writing a poem, not a dictionary.  Some subjectivity is permitted.  For next year's Day of Grace I'll not only have a poem ready, but a whole year in which to revise it.

               Rain of Grace

Grace is not theological thunder
booming from the rafters of a lofty cathedral,
but the rain on the roof
that makes the birds sing
and washes clean the common things
making even rocks beautiful.

Some men rejoice and some complain,
but all men feel the rain.

Grace is seen less in the splendor of stained glass panes
than in the translucent wonder of the rainbow
with its promise of mercy,
or the slender woman in the back pew,
from a life of pain and darkness,
who has finally seen the light.

Some men rejoice and some complain
but all men see the rain.

Grace sounds less like somber hymn chords
reverberating from a pipe organ
than a newborn's first, shrill cry,
an old saint's dying sigh,
the crude eloquence of a new saint's first prayer,
or the sound of rain after months of drought.

Some men rejoice and some complain 
but all men hear the rain.

Grace is not something to be touched,
but to be touched by.
It is seen only by those who look for it
and heard only by listening ears.
Only souls awakened by grace
begin to recognize its presence.

Some men respond and some disdain
while grace pours down like rain.   

As Always

     In one of the most well known stories in the Bible, Delilah lulls Samson to sleep on her lap and shaves off his hair, which is the source of his strength.  When the Philistines come to capture him, Samson tries to shake them off as he always had before.  Since he was asleep at the witch, so to speak, at the time his hair was shaved, he didn't know that his strength had left him.  I think about that story as I watch Garth, our 14 year old lab cross, trying to do the things he always did, not knowing his strength has left him. His hind legs quiver as he stands, his gimpy walk makes you think he needs a cane, chewing a bone can make him pant with exertion.  And yet. . .
    He expects to go on our morning walk to the island, as always, run around to sniff and pee in all the usual spots, as always, and walk ahead of me on the way home, as always.  No matter how slowly I walk, the exertion of as always leaves him panting and trembling after we return and, by evening, barely able to get his hips off the floor. In order to preserve both his strength and ego, I have shortened our morning walk to just to the river and back.  When my nephew and I want to take a longer walk, we take Garth on a decoy walk first, so he won't feel left out.
    When I am doing chores at home, Garth follows me from room to room in faithful lab fashion, unless I go to the basement.  He no longer has the strength to go either up or down the stairs.  Yesterday I was downstairs in the family room visiting with my daughter when I saw a shadow hesitating near the top of the stairs.  Since she has two stairs-impaired dogs, I thought one of them was debating whether our company was worth the effort of the climb down.  When I looked up and saw Garth's black legs on the second step, my heart went to my throat.  I ran to the stairs, turned him around, and lifted his hips so he could get back to the main floor.   Willing to use up his limited strength and risk a fall just to be near me.  Devoted, as always. 
     There are many lessons in this, the frailties of old age, the strength of devotion,  the importance of being near the ones we love, and that human males are not the only species to get set in their ways.  If I could love God with the the tenacity of a dog, I would be a better person.

          And when my strength has gone,
          may my heart carry on 
          dogged as the dawn,
                                         as always.

False Advertising

     Since my default drive is set to cheap, my idea of shopping is checking clearance racks.  I was doing this in Bozeman a couple weeks ago when I found a dress in a beautiful shade of blue.  I tried it on and it looked pretty good, but it was missing something--a waist.  What a coincidence, I am missing a waist also.  You would think a time called "middle age" would be more cooperative about whittling your middle.  Then I realized having a good figure at my age would be akin to false advertising.  From the back, my body would be writing checks my face couldn't cash.  Age is something better worn as a matching set.
     Along the same lines, I know a young woman subsisting on a deprivation diet because she is hoping to be picked up in the "Man Market".  This is wrong for several reasons, one being that she was not overweight to begin with, another that a man shopping for an emaciated woman is someone who she should pick on, not be picked up by.  The third reason is that unless she wants to stay on that deprivation diet the rest of her life, she is guilty of false advertising.  In this case, a weight-loss leader ad.  It's better to sit on the shelf than be stuck with a man who only shops in the health and beauty section. 

The Sound of Your Name

   There is a new country song I like called "Lookin' for a Woman Like You".  In the verses the singer describes his carefree bachelor days, but in the chorus he is looking for a woman like his wife.  My favorite line is "I love the sound of your name".  I wondered if my husband loved the sound of my name. He said yes, but only an idiot would have said no. Do I love the sound of his name?  Not exactly, but I love the place his name comes to rest inside me.  Deep, deep in my heart.

10 Things You Won't Hear From a BSF Discussion Leader

     I have previously admitted to being a Bible Study Fellowship addict.  I have stayed in it for 20 years because the accountability and application questions have changed my spiritual life.  I would rather be a junkie than a flunkie.  But there are rules--guidelines actually., and that is the basis for the following post. It is kind of an inside joke for my fellow addicts.  Ten things you will not hear from a BSF discussion leader:
  
1.  Would you like another cup of coffee?
2.  If you don't have an answer ready, just share off the top of your head.
3.  Don't bother giving a scripture reference.
4.  The notes were terrible this week.
5.  What church do you go to?
6.  Any last minute requests before we pray?
7.  Who is the guest you brought with you today?
8.  We'll stay here and finish while the others go to lecture.
9.  It's alright to share her name, we're discreet.
10. Text me the recipe during the lecture.

Missing Dinner

     I miss dinner most nights.  It's not that I don't eat it, of course I eat it, but it's not the same with us two middle aged mutton grazing sedately at one corner of the dinner table.  I miss the clatter of utensils, the clamor of conversation, the corruption of manners and the complaints of my children.  When the kids were growing up, we had two course meals.  My cooking efforts were followed by teaching a course called Table Manners and a course in making Pleasant Dinner Conversation.  Although my kids used passable table manners at home, my sons became afflicted with some sort of etiquette Alzheimer's after they became adults.  If I ever see a T shirt with the disclaimer "My mother tried to teach me manners", I"ll buy two for my sons (and one for my husband).  My daughter didn't forget what I taught her, but there was no way to foresee what novel ideas might occur to her after she left home--like drinking from the faucet sans glass.
    My attempts to achieve Pleasant Dinner Conversation were thwarted by my children's contrariness, my spouse's cluelessness and my own contributions from my work as a nurse aide.  When the bulk of your job involves measuring body functions and fluids, it is easy to derail decorum.  When I was a young bride, learning to cook was an adventure.  Making healthy, balanced meals on our unhealthy, unbalanced budget afforded great challenge.  Next there was the challenge of children. The challenge was not to cook for them, it was to survive them and help them survive each other.  Cooking for them was fun.  I made Easter egg nest cookies and animal shaped pancakes, although my animals looked like they came from another planet or the bacterial kingdom.  Grilled cheese sandwiches were coded, diagonal cuts meant Velveeta, straight cuts were cheddar.  Horizontal raisins meant the peanut butter on the celery was chunky, vertical for creamy.  Mealtimes were messy, but they mattered because that uncooperative flock was family.
     Though I cook the same food, my attitude is often why bother.  We still eat balanced meals, after all, it's easier to balance two things than four.  We visit about our day and no one interrupts or spills anything.  We are boring.  I'm too old to procreate, dinner guests are too polite, and random rude people are too hard to boss around.  But I have no more time for lamenting, it's time to make dinner--and miss it.

The Airing of My Ways

     Since the beginning of my marriage, my life has revolved around the spin of propellers, the pumping of pistons and the whoosh of jet engines.  I helped put my husband through tech school the first two years of our marriage and have lived off that investment for nearly 33 years as he has made his living as an aircraft mechanic and director of maintenance.  However, aircraft have been part of my life since childhood. Our family budget required low cost, better yet, free entertainment and one of those expense neutral activities was driving to the airport to watch airplanes take off and land.  In those days no one feared terrorism because we were all going to be annihilated by nuclear bombs anyway.  Anyone who wanted to was free to visit the airport.  There were no gift shops and bistros, just vending machines with cigarettes, little candy bars and flight insurance.
    The next big bang in the flight plan of my life was the arrival of sonic booms, which we accepted as a by-product of progress.  One vivid childhood memory is of my little brother standing in the back yard, pointing at a contrail and saying "Airplane! Airplane!"  He was young, handicapped and hard of hearing so it came out more like "A-pay!", but was still more understandable than Herve Villechaize on "Fantasy Island".  On the day the first jet aircraft came to Missoula, I was there in the crowd, immersed in a sea of adult shoulders, which turned out to be a good thing, since it protected all but my legs from the blast of air and gravel when the engines started.
     The airport was the extent of my aircraft aspirations.  Flying was a privilege of the rich.  Those of us grounded in the solidity of the middle class expected to remain on the ground.  Though the aircraft were primitive by today's standards, the service was first class.  Back when flight attendants were called stewardesses, stewardesses actually attended upon those on the flight.  An airline pilot could reasonably anticipate affluence as a destination.
     Today the sky is not the limit. If flying is no longer a privilege of the rich, it is also no longer a privilege.  We show up 90 minutes early for the opportunity to be lined up, stripped, scanned, searched and separated from our possessions.  Modern flying has all the glamor of incarceration.  And yet, even from the steerage section of the sky ship I have a god's eye view of the sky above and the corrugated clouds below as we speed across the vastness of continents and oceans and I feel privileged to live in a such a time, to know that somewhere a child is looking skyward and seeing--me.