Tag: children

Sacred Bears

When I shared the following events with my writer’s group and asked them to put a timeline on them, most guessed the 1950’s. Learning this occurred in 2002 disturbed them. Truly disturbing, though, is that, sadly, no one in this country right now would be surprised to enter a town square in nearly any southern state in the US and see again today what I saw then.

Black and White Teddy Bear on overturned children's chair

Sacred Bears

“Some old lady got my buddy in trouble!” was what I heard another pastor declare as I sat down at the weekly lunch of local United Methodist pastors in the county. (“Local Pastors” do not attend seminary but rather several years’ worth of courses in order to be allowed to preach from United Methodist pulpits.) I was running late, but I knew immediately what he was complaining about and I was annoyed to realize quickly he had only heard part of the story. “He was at the weekend school…”

“Course of Study,” I offered.

“Yeah. The Course of Study. Anyway, there was this festival on the square down there in Pulaski….”

“They called it ‘White Christian Heritage Festival’ but they were handing out KKK literature,” I added. He frowned.

“Okay…. so, this old lady just took what my buddy said all wrong. Then…then, she told the guy in charge.”

“Grady?” 

My colleague stared at me, determined to finish the story. “That old lady told Grady my buddy was part of the KKK!”

“Actually,” I said after I ordered my chicken salad with ranch on the side, “that ‘old lady’ told Grady that your buddy confessed to her that he could see where their teachings made sense. He said they made sense.’  So, since he is allowed to preach at a United Methodist church and to teach children and youth….”

“She probably just misunderstood.” 

Surely, I thought, this guy will catch on soon. I sighed. “So, I shoulda just let that slide?”  

The others at our table were clearly amused that my colleague didn’t get why I knew the story so well. In his defense, he attended a different Course of Study, lasting four weeks, in Atlanta for full time pastors in the United Methodist Church. His buddy and I were part time, which meant only 60 hours a week of work. Our Course of Study classes met over eight weekends a year with reading and papers in between those weekends, sometimes in Jackson and other times at Martin Methodist College in Pulaski. Pulaski, if you aren’t aware, is known for being home to some members  of the Mars candy family (think Milky Way) and is also generally credited with being the birthplace of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the KKK.  

I especially hated the overnight stays at these weekend schools. That particular weekend, I do not remember another woman in attendance. Not only was I away from my sons, but I was alone. In a motel room. In a strange town. A single woman.  Newly in recovery from trauma. In other words, someone who knew bad people did lurk in the shadows. Assuming all the men around were trustworthy was a luxury. So, I slept not at all. I took to wedging whatever chairs were in the room in front of the door in an effort to at least rest. 

On one particular Saturday, several of us left class to make a lap around the nearby downtown square on our lunch break only to encounter what was that day touted as a “Celebration of Southern Culture.” Displayed on the assorted tables were handtooled leather goods, canned peaches, okra and pickles. A brochure I found had previously invited area residents to join in the “family fun,” including a cakewalk.

Pretty quickly, though, I was stopped, jolted a stuffed teddy bear sitting among the books and maps under the magnolia trees. I believe God created Teddy Bears to provide a tactile reminder of love and affection, of comfort. This bear, though, had, through no fault of his own, become aligned with pure evil: he wore a white cotton robe and a white pointed cap that covered his face. This child’s toy was disguised, as if he, too, needed to hide his collusion with evil, like the men who had donned those robes and hoods in the night for so long. I thought they were a thing of our past and yet there they were, not hiding their affiliation at all and they had brochures, newsletters, books and even maps, the texts and visual aids to present these “Southern” beliefs. The first murmurs from the other pastors with me were indignant: how did these folks get to determine the definition of what was “southern”?

Eager to share with us about how God meant to order society, one of the men began to carefully explain the rationale for hatred, including their understanding that God, of course, looked just like them. In that moment,  the inference was that God most resembled a skinny, pasty middle-aged man in black slacks, a white shirt and a decades-old tie. A couple of pastors seemed interested in engaging. I was far from confident in my ability to face evil head on though; I, instead, focused on the contents of the tables.

Besides books and t-shirts, decals, key rings, watches, pins and flags, there were maps. I would not give them my money for books but I did consider buying one of the maps, a large laminated wall map designed to settle once and for all the mystery of the disappearance of the two “Lost Tribes” of Israel. Finally, I chuckled. They’d migrated, it seemed, from the Middle East and crossed over the Caucasus Mountains, stopping, of course,  in Scotland before heading into North America.  My ancestors were among those Scots who came through the Cumberland Gap and moved on into Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri. I hadn’t known, however, that we were either lost or a tribe of Israelites. This journey was credited with solving the mystery: the Lost Tribes were now known as “Caucasians,” according to the map, by virtue of having traversed the Caucasus Mountains. I kick myself now for not purchasing that map, but, at the time, I could not stomach giving these people my money.

I did try to offer them money for the Teddy Bear, for the sake of the children these men likely influenced, for the sake of the legacy of Teddy Bears the world over, and for the comfort and benevolence children had so long depended on them to provide, I wanted to scream, “How dare you?!” 

Gotta hand it to the KKK, though. Aligning an innocent source of comfort and safety with the evil of the KKK, twisting what a child loves and trusts and using it to promote hatred and exclusion is socially and theologically powerful. Teddy Bears are bordering on sacred, as far as I’m concerned, objects that carry children through those times when the adults are absent or preoccupied or already asleep.

The Teddy Bear in the hood and robe makes more sense when you recognize how much of the most destructive theology through the ages has been born out of childhood pain. We may never know who was the child who’d been hurt enough that he grew up and somehow chose to cover himself and his head and face with a white hood so his grandmother or his neighbors or his children did not see him when he was cruel and ugly. I wanted so badly to rescue that child, or at least rescue the Teddy Bear, to allow God to do what God does best: redeem both that Teddy Bear and whomever it was who dressed him up. 

I wanted so badly to rescue that child, or at least rescue the Teddy Bear, to allow God to do what God does best: redeem both that Teddy Bear and whomever it was who dressed him up. 

“He is not for sale” was the response, though, and so I left behind that embodiment of evil and prayed for the trust and spirits of all the children these pasty white men were teaching or had taught so far. 

I did pick up some brochures and printed newsletters and walked away before they realized I did not, in fact, agree with their understanding that our country was designed as a White Christian nation or that we ought to somehow respect men who hid behind masks to terrorize others. Later, I would discover the literature went so far as to advocate for internment facilities for those who had contracted AIDS, for example, or that we all were invited to a worship service that night, complete with “great white Christian fellowship” and a “brilliant cross-burning!” 

I was no longer hungry, so I walked back with one of the younger pastors. After a few moments’ walk in silence, I said simply, “I was not expecting that.” I was feeling shaken that this evil was so openly displayed and discussed; I’d been blissfully ignorant, I realized. I had honestly thought these clowns in hoods were anachronisms, relics of a bygone era, that they were no longer active, like the sundown signs I would later learn sat as sentinels along the highways at the edges of the town where I preached. Those signs–simple painted sunsets on road signs–were nonverbal warnings: if you were a person of color, you’d best not be found in this town after sunset. The signs had been taken down, but the sentiments, fears and prejudices were not so deeply buried. I would later be disturbed to find out, for example, that two members of my congregation had been “card-carrying” KKK members while  I was pastor there. As a white woman, I had been ignorant and thus, negligent.

As we walked back to classes that weekend, though, my companion, a pastor who was about 15 years my junior, pointed out that “southern culture” was his culture. Then he added, “They did make some valid points. Did you realize they’re Christian?” 

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“If you listen to what they are saying,” he went on, “you will discover that they make a lot of sense.” 

He was a pastor. 

He taught a children’s Sunday School class, too, and he seemed interested, not disturbed, but interested in the Teddy Bear in the robe and hood.

“How,” I asked as calmly as I could while placing one foot in front of another, “would you go about teaching this to children?” I wanted him to clarify, to make me realize I’ve misunderstood, to tell me he wasn’t teaching ‘southern culture’ to the children, but he didn’t say any more. As we approached the classroom for our last afternoon that weekend, I wondered what the other pastors might say. Turns out, very little. I remember watching the others in the rest of the day’s lecture and discussion, wondering why no one mentioned what we’d seen. Had they debated at lunch? Had they discovered  others open to these ideas? No one seemed angry, at least not that they’d admit. I felt like I was playing a game my sons liked where you had to pretend that the floor was lava, so don’t dare put your feet down; it was dangerous. I hoped that the overt racism we’d witnessed had shocked them too. I feared, though, they knew from experience not to admit out loud they “got” where these guys were coming from, that, like my walking companion, they knew to simply shut down the conversation if they thought they’d shown their own hood to the wrong person. 

Once we’d finished for the day and each of the pastors was headed home to prepare to preach the next morning, I found Grady, the professor in charge. I explained I did not want to cause an issue for a colleague but I was disturbed about what this pastor might be teaching, especially in Sunday school for children. I wasn’t sure what to do and had not felt safe addressing him directly. Grady listened, got the particulars, then told me it was his place to address it. 

I heard nothing else for a month until I received an email from Grady; he’d spoken to the younger pastor’s District Superintendent, who evidently had found “no reason to believe such reports” and had never even spoken to the guy. This information hit my inbox just before leaving for the next weekend class. Once there, I was dismayed to find that the young pastor was there before me, annoyed, and looking for me. He was pretty sure I was the one who had ratted him out. I was the only “old lady” there. 

He greeted me with “I got called on the carpet by my DS,” which was a stark departure from what my professor had been told.  “When can we talk about this alone?” he wanted to know. 

“Excuse me,” I said, walking away; that was as much as he got for the rest of the weekend from me.

I still count that entire episode a disappointing failure, though I didn’t know how to do anything differently at the time. Not tossing my books and overnight bag in my car and leaving right away seemed the best I could manage for the time being. Clearly, I needed to learn how to counter this twisting of theology openly, to be prepared to teach the children and youth in the churches I served that Jesus really meant it when He said He loved every body. So I stayed. For the rest of that weekend, I kept my distance. I kept my guard up. I didn’t sleep.

I wasn’t surprised then a few weeks later at lunch, though, when this “old lady” was being castigated and labelled a busybody sticking her nose in other people’s business. 

Just to be clear, I asked my angry colleague, “That old lady ought to have simply looked the other way?” 

“Exactly!” he said. “It was none of her…your business.”

Of Puppets, Delicatessens and Learning Styles

How a delicatessen menu taught me how to understand how my son – and my church members – learn.

While I was writing this, I had several conversations, mostly with my oldest son, Arlo, a college instructor, about the third grade retention law in Tennessee and how students often do well in reading or math skills but not in testing even though it is through standardized testing that it is determined whether or not they will advance or be held back to repeat third grade. The teachers I know work so very hard to help each student and if we are going to have standardized learning (i.e., all students of an age studying the same thing at the same time) then we will have standardized testing is a necessary evil. Having taught the students who ended up in Study Skills classes in a community college because after high school they were still not ready for college-level work, though, I know that brilliant people may never learn to test well. Many among us will go through life believing they are not smart when in fact it is simply because they learn differently and do not have access to the learning environment that suits them. We certainly cannot expect our teachers to be able to teach to all learning styles, but all of us can learn from those around us how they – and we – learn better, i.e., we can figure this out together.

Always Learning

No one was more surprised than I was when my youngest son – the shy one, the one who barely spoke until he was three – agreed at around age nine to be the puppeteer for our children’s time in worship. Until that point, most of the church knew him only as the child peeking out from behind the pastor. Turns out, Spencer didn’t speak much until he was three for a couple of reasons: first, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise with three non-stop talkers also at the dinner table; and second, like his older brother, he was born when we lived in Japan where he heard less English than Japanese. We moved back to the states before he was one, so he was uprooted and plopped down in Tennessee just when he was learning to speak. Changing how his brain was wired likely took a minute. The first real words he uttered came as a full sentence, though, or actually, as a question from his favorite movie: “Who ya gonna call?” 

The many faces of Spencer (now a lawyer, married, expecting his own child.)

Once he started talking, we would find out what a quick and dry wit he had developed.  I had introduced a children’s time during worship early and I was reminded regularly I was not in control, often by my own children. The morning I told the children about Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish, then “thrown up” onto the beach, Spencer jumped in with his commentary. 

“Could have been worse,” he said. “Could have come out the other end.”

He was eight when we got to the first church I served, just old enough to go to see his friend Charlie one town over for an overnight stay. Evidently, however, he could not sleep, he confessed when I picked him up the next day. Charlie’s mother was as surprised and concerned as I was; what had he done all night while everyone else slept?

“Watched infomercials,” he said. 

I looked to Charlie’s mom who seemed worried I might be upset. “Well, you’ll get a nap in the car ride home,” I offered, shrugging. 

My son said thanks and goodbye, then stopped at the back door long enough to tell Charlie’s mom, “Oh, your George Foreman grill will be here in three weeks.” Then he walked out the door, leaving both adults bewildered. 

That dry sense of humor and sense of timing would serve him well as a puppeteer. I planned to use the Children’s Time to both entertain and teach. We had a large red dog puppet, whom we renamed Jeffrey and whom we decided would be allowed to ask questions no one else dared ask. In his debut, our puppet first told what would become my favorite joke.

“What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?” he asked. 

I shrugged and asked, “What?”

“Anyone can roast beef.”

It took a minute, but we both waited, expecting to hear the chuckles move across the room slowly; first, though, we heard the roar from the back pew. One of my church members, Ray, loved the joke apparently. A few months later, I would visit him in the hospital and laugh myself because nearly every person who helped me find him that day would ask, “You mean the guy with the pea soup joke?” A year later, he would succumb to the illness that had sent him to the hospital. Sitting in the visitation parlor of the funeral home, I would hear the joke enough to prompt me at the funeral service the next day to ask how many in that room knew the difference between roast beef and pea soup. Nearly everyone raised a hand.  

On that first Sunday of the puppet’s debut, once the ripples of laughter had died down, Jeffrey asked me, the pastor, what I was wearing under that robe? I had not worn a robe before that, but frankly hoped the robe would solve the ever-challenging task of what to wear when preaching. 

“Why, I’m glad you asked,” I said. Then, as I reached down to lift up the hem of my robe, I saw Jeffrey had covered his eyes and was exclaiming, “No, no, no…!” Jeffrey was a hit and became one of our most effective teaching tools.  Using a puppet was in part a response to all I had been learning about how to help my people learn something about themselves and their God. 

Lessons from the Deli

Opportunities to learn what worked for teaching and what didn’t flew at me from all directions at that church; the toughest part was catching all of them and seeing how they were related. A delicatessen menu, for example, taught me about my son, my sister, father and my church. I knew my son was smart; I just didn’t know why he was so often angry until we visited the new delicatessen in Gallatin. We met up with some friends for lunch and we were standing at the counter as a group, staring at the menu, which was written on the back wall of the restaurant behind the counter where the sandwiches, soups and salads were prepared. Usually, when we ate lunch at drive through restaurants, menus sported pictures and we all knew what they were called because we could all sing the jingles we heard during commercial breaks while we watched our favorite television shows. At the new deli, even I felt the pressure to peruse the menu quickly, so I turned to my youngest son and asked if he saw anything he might want for lunch. He looked at me, bewildered. It was a glorious moment of vulnerability; normally, he would have barked at me for singling him out for help. At that moment, though, I realized he did not see what I saw. I saw “Salads,” in larger, bold lettering, for example, then “Chicken,” “Tuna” and “Garden” salad categories in smaller lettering followed by even smaller paragraphs with descriptions for each salad. He saw lots and lots of jumbled letters. 

“Want a ham sandwich?” I offered, knowing what he liked, and told him he could have it on white, wheat or rye bread and he chose rye just to be adventurous. 

“Can I have mayonnaise on it?” he asked.

 “Absolutely,” I said, “and no tomatoes. Chips?” He agreed to chips and soda. 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I made a note, though, to visit our local library and there I was grateful to find out about different learning styles and how those often mirror and/or drive the different ways we relate socially in the world. Some of us learn just fine the way most subjects are taught in school; others struggle. I personally learn by taking what is presented and being able to then restate it in my own words. In Chemistry in high school, for example, my teacher would walk me through the problem at hand and it always made sense to me in that moment. If I did not get a chance to retell within a short time the solution to the chemistry problem, though, it would be lost to me. I may have initially understood it but I would quickly lose grasp of the solution if I had not written it down and been able to explain it myself. Only if I wrote something down, then retold it in my own words, would I learn what had been presented. Fortunately, that was easy enough to do in most classes growing up. I personally kept great notes and studying for an exam was a matter of going over and over my notes until I could nearly recite them word for word and then recreate them for an exam. Just explain something to me orally, though, then exit and the understanding would leave the room with you. 

My son, I realized, learned by watching and repeating what he’d seen as well, but by doing, not writing and reading. When he was five, we watched him recreate a rocket tower with his plastic building toys while watching one of his favorite movies about the Apollo 13 moon mission. When the rocket took off during the movie, we realized that our son’s rocket tower fell away in stages in exactly the same way the real tower did, something none of the rest of us had even noticed. I do believe that he would have been likely labeled with some sort of “learning disorder” had we not homeschooled our sons. As it was, what I read suggested he simply needed some understanding of his learning style and what might be getting in the way of his learning. He needed me to recognize, for example, that he found distracting those modern textbooks with their colorful pages and art interspersed with words. Simply placing a piece of colored plastic across a textbook page, though, rendered the colors and art less distracting. Turns out, he was among many who struggled because we as a culture had decided it was somehow helpful to readers to spice up the visuals in our textbooks and magazines.  Some of us enjoyed the art; some of us were too distracted to be able to read. Different styles.

Some of us will find a page like this helpful. Others might be distracted by the art. Page from “The Way Life Works,” by Mahlon Hoagland and Bert Dodson, Times Books, 1995.

Spencer also needed information: when you read a textbook, a menu or a newspaper, you start with the largest letters. Might seem intuitive, but not everyone approaches the world in an intuitive manner and our world is richer precisely because we are not all the same. To read a newspaper, you look first at the headlines; on a menu, you choose categories like soup or sandwiches. Once you decide whether or not you want a sandwich or sports, you look to the next largest groups of letters and decide if you want a tuna sandwich or if you want to read the previous days’ scores. Smaller letters give you details about the avocado sandwich you chose, or where the baseball scores can be found. Even smaller lettering leads you to what else you could have on the sandwich or which team won the game or match. 

Learning styles also affect our approach to the world and our relationships. Often, my son simply needed information to help him navigate.

Turns out, when it came to relationships, the same was true. Often, he simply needed information to help him navigate. He asked once what to do when someone was crying. Before, his tactic was to walk away and get someone to help. He wasn’t uncaring. Far from it. He was worried he’d hurt someone more by saying or doing the wrong thing when they were already vulnerable. I suggested a plan: stay close by, and, if you know them well enough, put a hand on their shoulder or arm and ask if there is anything you can do to help. He said thanks and that was that; I thought he’d forgotten about it really until a couple of years later when said he had tried that with a friend and had been relieved to find it had really worked. 

What I had learned was that my son needs information while others learn visually or by hearing. Tragically, seldom do pastors learn how the people around them learn. My son taught me why so many of my family members and congregants might be frustrated. Suddenly, for example, my understanding of one member bragging that he’d finished college “without ever cracking a textbook,” changed. He’d turned that into a plus when it had actually been a hint to his learning style, one not often supported in schools then. Quickly, I understood why our children’s time was often the only part of the worship service people remembered in the beginning. The story or our puppet wasn’t teaching theology; it was just funny, but funny can be theological if you’ve let your guard down expecting a funny joke. 

On one of the first Sundays using Children’s Time, I talked in the sermon about “schadenfreude,” the idea that we take some joy in others getting their due or at least not getting more than us. For the children’s time, I had brought wrapped pieces of hard candy and shared it with the children, but I only had three pieces, so the last child in line got none. When he protested, I explained, “I ran out but at least three of the children get some so we can be happy for them, right?” 

“That’s not fair,” he wailed.

“Well, then, perhaps no one should have candy,” I suggested, snatching back the candies from the other children before they knew what was happening. They were, of course, bewildered by quickly changing fortunes. “Is that better?” I asked. 

He grinned. “Yes!” 

Of course, everyone laughed (but I immediately  regretted the lesson we were all learning at his expense.) In that moment, the pastor learned to think through the children’s messages more carefully. The child felt better but the others were sad and bewildered until I said,  “Wait. Look! There’s another piece of candy here after all.” All the children eagerly accepted their candy and went back to sit with their families. before their fortunes changed again.

Likely none of the children heard the sermon that day but the adults were primed to hear my sharing about my own schadenfreude. 

Ironically, I admitted, I had seen this in myself that morning driving to church. I was sideswiped and nearly run off the road by a speeder. My reaction to that bit of driving aggression had been far from pastoral. To make matters worse, when I passed the same guy a little later getting a ticket just a few miles down the road, I gloated loudly! My schadenfreude, or joy, was that he was “getting his due.” The adults in the room understood the idea better and had it reinforced because of Children’s Time. They understood better then the prophet Jonah who was not happy to discover that God wanted to forgive all the sinners in Nineveh; Jonah wanted to see them “get their due.” We usually want others to get justice while we ourselves get mercy and forgiveness. That’ll preach, as they say.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels.com

Over the years, then, using all I learned, I not only used the Children’s Time and our snarky puppet, but also worked to craft sermons heavy with stories and illustrations because so many of us only remember the stories we hear or the “word pictures” we encounter. “Show. Don’t tell,” works. Maybe too well. After a couple of years of working to find and add stories to the sermons in hopes people would take something away from worship, I got one of what would feel like daily lessons in humility. At an Administrative Council meeting, a member offered the devotion before the meeting proper using a story I’d told three weeks earlier in my sermon.  “Ah,” I thought, sitting back and smiling, “they DO listen.” But no. Once she’d finished her devotion, she handed me her notes. 

“Feel free,” she said, “to use that in a sermon. It’s a great story.” Sigh.

Bonus free joke from the adult Spencer: 

What is the difference between a tuna, a piano and a glue stick?

I don’t know. What is the difference between a tuna, a piano and a glue stick?

You can tuna piano but you can’t piano a tuna.

 Okay.

But what about the glue stick? 

That’s what everybody gets stuck on.

What’s ‘Just enough’ Christmas?

Christmas swings like a pendulum do….

My paternal grandmother, Arbaleta (Grandma Leta), and maternal grandmother, Marie (Grandma Ree), could not have been more different creatures, and this was never more obvious than at Christmas. At first glance, it seemed to me that they were polar opposites when it came to wintry holidays especially; in retrospect, it is evident they were each on opposite points of the pendulum that has come to symbolize Christmas for me. Generation after generation on both sides of my family seemed to be unconsciously caught up by the wild swings of this holiday pendulum, a reactionary arc between a resounding “Yes!” to Christmas and its counterpart, an adamant “Hell, no!” 

My Granddaughter’s depiction of our favorite activity: swinging. She is so wise….

Finding Healing Around Christmas

Maybe your family needs some healing around holidays as well. Sure, it seems strange to talk about Christmas amidst all the paper and ribbon and cookies and tinsel, but it is, in fact, the best time to step back, recognize struggles and disappointment and start our families on paths to peace with Christmas; maybe along the way we could even figure out what’s “enough” for joy. I offer this reflection then to all our families because we cannot find healing if we do not know our family’s wounds. Here’s hope for discussions about upcoming celebrations: may they be intentional, loving and truly joyful for all.

Marie as a young woman.
Marie, George, & their three daughters, 1940’s
Arbaleta and husband, Freeman (Mac)

For me, it seems the best place to start is with the grandmothers. Both of my grandmothers were born around WWI; each married during the Great Depression. Neither had, as they say, “a pot to piss in,” not while they were growing up and not while they were young mothers. Both worked hard to support their families outside the home as well as in. Dad’s mom, Arbaleta, had two children, a boy and a girl, nine years apart. Mom’s mother, Marie, had three daughters all close in age. 

Arbaleta’s husband, my Grandpa Mac, fell from an electric pole when he was young and wasn’t supposed to ever walk again, but did, in great part because Arbaleta would not let him not walk. She reportedly insisted he move his legs and even moved them for him for months as physical therapy until he could walk and work again. While I was never close to Grandma Leta, I have always admired the steely determination that these actions showed.

Marie had a husband who was always on the road as a truck driver, mostly because the bus or truck driver jobs close to town weren’t well-paying. He died of a massive heart attack at age 50; she lived another 30-plus years and married her high school sweetheart, then outlived him and married another kind man when she was eighty. At that wedding, the minister declared what we all knew, “Marie is a hopeful woman!” Grandma Ree, as we called her, was the quintessential kindergarten teacher when teachers still had time for nature walks, ironing leaves between sheets of waxed paper, and silly songs. Thus, she was the kind of grandmother I aspired to be: she played games with us, prayed for us, encouraged us and defended us when necessary.  For most of her life, she modeled a love of learning: she earned a master’s degree, helped “plant” two churches, became an accomplished painter and was memorizing her favorite Bible verses in her seventies because she was losing her eyesight.    

Marie as a teen.
A painting by Marie for an art class while working on her Master’s. A local Spanish-American War vet sat for the class.

While I know little of Arbaleta’s childhood except poverty and hardship, I know Marie helped her mother run a boarding house after her chiropractor father divorced her mother, something which mortified both women.

That I’m aware of, Arbaleta seldom left her home after we were born. At least we never saw her leave her home, though, as far as we knew, she was perfectly capable. Our collective memory of her is of her seated on the sofa in her silk pajamas. Every time we visited her, we would wave to her from a few feet away as she perched on the sectional sofa in the corner, surrounded by shelves of various sizes and shapes of cacti. In one hand she held a lit cigarette, ashes threatening to crumble onto the silk, and the other hand held the ever-present bean bag ashtray (you know, the kind that has the bean bag on the bottom and the colorful aluminum tin bowl on the top.) That I can remember, she never once kissed, hugged or touched us in any way, shape or form. And, though she was pleasant, there were no memorable conversations, just the cloud of cigarette smoke that circled above her. 

As for Christmas, well, I can’t remember there being much of it in their home at the edge of a Kansas golf course where she and Grandpa had retired. Ironically, I’m not aware Grandpa played golf, though my Dad did well into his eighties. As far as Christmas goes, Arbaleta represented the point in the arc where celebration was merely tolerated. Every few years, our parents would tote our gifts to their house to open on that rare occasion we woke up there on a Christmas morning, but the mood in the house was that Christmas decoration was, well, perfunctory. There was a tree and maybe a wreath, but evidently, for Grandpa and Arbaleta, a tree and some lights outside were “just enough,” though I suspect they were only put up to satisfy us. If overcoming poverty was Arbaleta’s life goal, she met it, thus the home on the golf course as well as the purchase of a new Lincoln every year. Secular or religious, it didn’t matter; Christmas was a formality, expected, tolerated for the children. Christmas dinner involved polished silver and store bought sweets, if any. “Please wait until you have permission to touch.”

Arbaleta died when I was seven and, suddenly, the focus of Christmas on my father’s side of the family shuddered and swung hard to the opposite extreme. Her daughter brought in Christmas every year from then on with a vengeance, lovingly, but with an overwhelming force. Every year, my aunt seemed to be competing for best Christmas ever, ostensibly in response to her own mother’s lackadaisical attempts.

While certain treasured and expensive statuary graced my aunt’s mantle for Christmas, for example, every year, the Christmas tree itself, usually the biggest tree I’d ever seen, sported a different theme with new, all handmade ornaments. I often asked when she started making them, sure she must have begun the previous New Year’s Day. She also made most of our gifts; they were always of Pinterest quality and I treasured several sweaters she knitted for me, for example. 

As if it were necessary, she also became an amazing cook and thus, Christmas visits always involved impressing us with recipes for new dishes. Ironically, my mother didn’t want the recipes and my mother’s mother, Marie, didn’t need them; my mother was too busy leaning into that dysfunctional pendulum that was swinging back to the starker side, likely in reaction to her mother’s seasonal excess. 

Marie, my mother’s mother, was on that same swing of the pendulum as my aunt, though I believe Grandma Ree went all out for her Christmas celebration for different reasons. Her husband, Grandpa George, also died when I was seven, but that did not slow Marie down in life or around the holidays. From the moment you opened the door into her home at Christmas, the scent of pine and wild berry candles carried you through room after room of greenery, holly, bells, poinsettias and new figurines or miniatures each year. Also new each year were the sweetbreads and cookies and homemade candies, all awaiting our discovery after hugs and kisses were exchanged and the coats and mittens and caps were piled onto a bed in the back of the house. 

Grandma Ree with her brother, Mother and Sister, c. 1960’s.

A Family Nightmare

While Marie’s response seemed to me to somewhat resemble that of Arbaleta’s daughter, the driving force behind Marie’s likely unconscious Christmas reverie gone amuck was a well-kept secret, a family nightmare. On two separate Christmas Eves, during her childhood and youth, Grandma Ree had lost family members to suicide. I was, of course, an adult before I was made aware of that history or the details: one drank poisoned alcohol and one shot himself, both on separate Christmas Eves. Of course, the grief and shock of their actions was complicated by their (conscious or unconscious) efforts to ruin Christmas forever for some of their family.

How painful were their memories of the holidays?

Before we assume that Marie’s attempts to reclaim Christmas was the reason for the pendulum’s extreme movements, though, we need to recognize that some calamity in earlier generations drove those men to choose Christmas Eve to end their lives; we have to ask how painful were their memories of the holidays that drove them to risk also ruining the holiday for their spouses and children? How far back did the pain begin and what don’t we know about that? 

In other words, it’s not likely either man, both of whom must have been suffering and feeling hopeless, started the family on that path.

The result, though, seems to have been an unconscious struggle to compensate. Those grand swings between holiday excess and hopelessness left subsequent generations still unconsciously at a loss to figure out what’s enough celebration. Further, while we can understand what might have spurred Marie’s need to excel at Christmas, I’ll likely never know what caused Arbaleta’s lack of enthusiasm for the holidays, and so I’m left simply to marvel at the overwhelming force of her daughter’s frenzied Christmas efforts. Sadly, or thankfully, no one now has picked up that mantle and the extended family is so fractured as to make these discussions nearly impossible.

I offer these reflections then to my nuclear family as the beginning of some discussions around conscious choices rather than wild reactions.

How does a family figure out what’s enough Christmas when the family’s history is, well, fractured? My own efforts were often emotionally unsatisfying; not only were my mother’s Christmas efforts headed for the stark extreme in reaction to her mother’s and her sister-in-law’s excesses, but they were complicated by my general lack of interest in cooking or baking except when absolutely necessary. 

It was my ex-husband who started me thinking about some of our responses to holidays years ago: he protested the idea of Valentines’ Day for example, saying we could and should give one another cards or flowers or candy at anytime of the year and not just one day chosen by candy and card companies and florists. Yes, we can, I agreed wholeheartedly. But do we? Of course not, I pointed out. To his credit, he came by his dislike and struggle with holidays honestly and thus brought his own reactions to our holiday table: his birthday is the day after Christmas, and he was one of six children. His Christmas gift always came with a declaration that, “Oh-that’s your birthday gift too.”

Over the years, I certainly have struggled with holidays, whether it’s decorating or preparing a feast or just planning. Don’t get me started on birthdays for children; too many of those ended in my tears from exhaustion and a sense of failure. Did I tell you about all the “Pinterest Fails?”

All these things and more (all these things and more) that’s what Christmas means to me, my love….)

Stevie Wonder

Plenty of us struggle with the holidays, though, whether because of grieving a loss or knowing you’re the only one who can’t afford the gift exchange. I’ve tried over the years to make our gifts for Christmas but again, I know too many of my family members and friends were less than thrilled with the results. Mea culpa. We tried spreading the Christmas holiday over several days to lessen the wild two-minute frenzy of Christmas morning. We tried taking Christmas to the mountains; we tried staying home. We wondered what would happen if our family just gave up one Christmas and had lots of little ones? Could that not translate into lots of chances to do or give or be kind to one another? So many of our attempts at intentional Christmases revolved around not expecting one or two people to create a magical holiday that only left them in tears and exhausted.

We’ve finally begun to incorporate some activities intentionally. Instead of china and crystal, we copied someone else’s snowman place settings, something the granddaughter and I could share. Last year, we started some silly story telling. This year, we introduced Karaoke and I am trying to reclaim the joy of baking by helping my granddaughter learn; watching her “knead” the goop she bought at the store made me think. Lo and behold, she discovered the joy of yeast and how it rises and how the baker must punch down the dough, then knead it. Her eyes grew wide after she made a fist and punched away. “That is soooo satisfying,” she said. A keeper. 

In case you’re wondering, religion did not seem to figure at all in the wild reactions to the holiday through the years for my extended family. While Arbaleta was, as far as I know, agnostic, and Marie was a strong Christian, neither of them addressed or seemed to include the religious holiday in their efforts to reclaim or dismiss Christmas. For our family, that’s a different pendulum altogether. I personally love a good candlelight Christmas eve service singing and the idea that God came to be with us as an infant. Nevertheless, culturally we continue to struggle with all that Christmas celebrations have become for generations and we cannot heal from pain we do not acknowledge.

For our family, the faith and religious rituals are different pendulum altogether. I will never know why my Grandma Ree did not incorporate more of her personal faith into the celebration. Personal experience suggests she was treading lightly with agnostic family members and, as is true for many families, also celebrated on different days with different parts of the family, balancing church events with home. Nevertheless, culturally, we continue to struggle with all that our secular celebrations of Christmas have become for generations, often leaving us to begin another year frustrated, sad, discouraged. That is where we can start, but we must look collectively at this because we cannot heal from pain we do not acknowledge.

The best time, I believe, to reflect on how we celebrate Christmas is when we are all together…and we’ll before Christmas comes around-unexamined-again.

For my family, I continue to try to reframe Christmas in light of the history I bring to the holiday. I guess I hope through reflections and questions to step completely back from that wild, reactionary swinging between excessive celebration to indifference and even disdain. 

I think one key is that we focus on the children, but with respect for their needs and not our own needs to give them the best holiday ever! 

They get tired; we pay attention. They want to dress up; they don’t want to dress up. Quiet time, dancing in the kitchen time, gifts that involve us engaging with them. I’m not saying we’re the best with children ever or that ours are happier than any other. What I am saying is that like in so much of life, the children around me ground me. What they need is so often what I need. Let’s sing Jingle Bells, yes, at a gathering, but we mustn’t forget the bells themselves and our need to jingle them to make the song come to life.

A little percussion goes a long way and when we sing “Jingle Bells” there need to be jingling bells….A five-year-old taught me that.

Music must also be a source of holiday joy for many families. I’m jealous of those who manage a musical gathering but hopeful that might be in our future as well. Certainly with percussion everyone can participate! The idea of introducing music brings us back, though, both to the need for sensory awareness and to the idea of joy and reverie throughout the year. In order for there to be music next year, we need to practice throughout the year – often and, by practicing, remember the things that do bring us joy without wearing us out. I write this and share it now, after the holiday blitz, planning to share it with my family, to start the conversation we can have in anticipation of next year. I am curious to hear from them, and find out if they are aware of, or experiencing their own pendulum of Christmases, maybe even unknowingly riding that pendulum right now. I’m hopeful that with some lowered expectations of ourselves and a little yeast, we just might be able to rescue the holidays from the extremes of that dysfunctional pendulum my family rode for far too long AND decide for ourselves what is “enough Christmas.”

 

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The First Time I Ran Away

Always a Fashionista…gotta love the boots.

When I was five, I ran away from home. Of course I didn’t get far. My world then revolved around a quarter-acre yard in Springfield, Missouri, on a corner lot, two blocks from my elementary school. We lived a short drive away from where I was attending kindergarten at our First Baptist Church and near enough to some train tracks that I knew it was bedtime by the train whistle every night. The little three-bedroom, one bath brick house on Marlin Street had a fenced-in backyard, a sand box, a metal clothesline and a weeping willow tree, all seemingly perfect for three children under six. Its feathery leaves hung to the ground, draping around the trunk with just enough room under the canopy for a five- year-old to hide and imagine different worlds than were to be found inside the little house on Marlin. 

For the longest time, I couldn’t tell you why I ran away on that particular day. I often wondered if it hadn’t been that I didn’t want to go back to kindergarten. I went on the afternoon shift, so we basically had an hour or two of ABC’s, singing, and a snack in the gymnasium of First Baptist Church before we took a nap. I already could read and write some when I got to kindergarten, so there was no struggle for me there. 

There had been a memorable first day spent on the vinyl chair in our kitchen trying to learn to tie my shoes. “Little boys and girls who can’t tie their own shoes are not big enough to go to kindergarten,” I’d been told again and again.  “They’ll send you right home.” I had spent the morning of my first day of kindergarten tying and untying my red plaid tennis shoes, both my mother and me praying I’d avoid the shame of the teacher calling my mother to bring her little “baby” home. We needn’t have worried. Not once did I ever have to tie my shoes while at school. 

Perhaps, on that morning, I simply didn’t want another perm.

My mother struggled daily with my full head of “straight as a pencil” “dirty-brown” hair because it was constantly tangled. Every day, we’d have the same conversation about brushing the underside of my hair, that thick mat next to my neck, and every day I would stare at her as if I were hearing the laments and reprisals for the first time. My hair may have been the bane of her existence but her brushing my hair is the only physical connection with her I remember. Her brushing it angrily. Her trimming errant bangs until the top of my head was nearly visible. Her trying to make it curl. Her finally chopping the hair off rudely, at a strange angle because she was done with it, as fed up as I was with trying to tame that mane. 

Mom had been introduced that summer to the “home permanent.” I’d never been to a salon even to have my hair cut. Mom cut our hair herself with her sewing scissors, black handled shears that were never sharpened or oiled, as far as I could tell, so they’d pull when she hacked away at the thick bunch she’d grab in her left hand and chop with her right hand. I remember staring into the bathroom mirror blankly. I hadn’t cared that she cut it because of how horrid it looked, I realize now. I cared because she said, as she was sweeping up the hair from the floor, “Now you can just brush it yourself.” She would no longer brush it for me. I think I would even in that moment have agreed to another permanent like the one that had failed so miserably and sent her to her sewing basket for the shears.

I can still smell a home perm a mile away….

The day before, the permanent had required a couple of hours of me seated on that sticky vinyl chair in our kitchen while she rolled strand after strand in metal-curlers, the kind with bristles meant to grab and hold the hair long enough for the chemicals to alter the makeup of your hair and teach it to curl like those golden locks on Shirley Temple  If the rolling of the curlers wasn’t bad enough, the chemicals made my nose burn and my eyes water and the bristles on the curlers pricked my scalp. Then, once the solution had been applied and wiped off my neck and back, I was told to take my daily nap. Whether we slept or not, we “napped” every day so Mom could have time to herself, a practice I appreciated when I had children. Only on this day, because of the perm, I was relegated to a rug on the floor by the washer in our laundry room. I could have no pillow for my head because we didn’t want to ruin a pillow. Were we worried about ruining my head? Also, no pillow meant any attempts to rest my head caused dozens of tiny needles to prick my scalp, but sitting up and trying to read sent rivulets of stinky solution dripping down my neck and back. I would not rest well that afternoon. 

Sadly, the perm did not “take.” My hair rebelled. My mother was furious, disgusted, as she yanked curler after curler off only to watch the long brown strands defiantly continue to hang as straight as pencils. She was crying. I was crying. She’d been trying to prepare me to participate in a Girls’ Auxiliary ceremony at our church where her teenage cousin would be “crowned ” a princess. The Girls’ Auxiliary was the church’s alternative to the Girl Scouts, designed to encourage girls to learn Scripture, study the lives of missionaries and participate in ministries like collecting monies for children India and China. To the program’s credit, many of us certainly were inspired by godly women like Lottie Moon. My cousin had completed the requirements for attaining the “Princess” rank and there was to be a ceremony at church. I was tasked with carrying a paper gold crown on a pillow to be placed on her head. Mom wanted me to represent the family well, to look pretty and be a shining example of the next generation of princesses. 

But my shock of brown hair refused to do its part. And mom was fed up. She’d gotten the shears out just as her aunt called and offered to come over and help. Her aunt had three daughters, all teens, and somehow managed to fashion a dainty pony tail for the ceremony. 

The next day, however, the shears returned and that was all she wrote. My hair would not cover my neck again that year or the next. Not until I learned to brush it myself. I could not for my part, see the point. I didn’t care about my hair being pretty, which may seem ironic, since I was teased incessantly by my father. He was annoyed that I was so attached to my white straw hat, white gloves and white wicker purse, all gifts from grandparents the year before for Easter. He thought I wanted to be “a little lady” because I carried my purse with the gloves inside it and donned my little white straw hat with a yellow ribbon nearly every day for most of that year. I didn’t participate in outdoor activities anymore with my brother or sister that year. I preferred instead to go outside in my hat and carry my purse to sit under my tree and pretend I was somewhere else. It would be years later when I’d realize why I wanted to be anywhere else.

Of course, picture day came soon after the cut.

At the time, I just remember being grateful I could pull that straw hat over my crooked bangs. That afternoon then, while mom was sweeping my hair off of the bathroom floor, and I was supposed to be on my bed for naptime, I pulled the hat down over my ears, shoved my gloves into the purse and snuck out the screen door from the laundry room, careful not to let it creak or slam shut. 

I had left a note on my bed that I expected her to find, a note that simply said, “I am running away. Jodi.” Then I went outside and sat under my tree, my back against the trunk, legs stretched out towards the backside of the house, the branches drooping and fingering the ground as the breeze tried to cool the afternoon. Then I waited. I waited for her to find my note and come running frantically out of the laundry room into the carport, searching. I waited for her to scoop me up and hug me and exclaim how relieved she was that I was safe. I waited for her to carry me inside proclaiming she would never let me go, maybe even to bake cookies for me. Just for me. 

I waited, and, then, worried she wouldn’t be able to see me under the tree whose branches drooped to the ground, I moved to the sandbox. And waited some more. When the heat got to me, I moved to the back door that led to the laundry room and perched on the steps, clutching my purse, waiting to be found. I’ll never know how long I waited, but eventually I got tired and gave up. Then, slowly so as to not make the screen door squeak, I peered into the laundry room at the ugly rug that still stank of permanent solution. I crept past the opening to the kitchen and found no one, so I crept to the bedroom I shared at the time with my sister. She was asleep on her bed. My brother was asleep across the hall in his bedroom. Even my mother lay sleeping on her bed; drugged by the heat and disappointed by the day.

I guess I was sure Mom must have seen the note and ignored it, so, ever the quick thinker, I crossed my name off and penciled in my sister’s name on it instead, then fell asleep. It would be years before I’d wonder why I hadn’t just crumpled the note up, why it hadn’t dawned on me that my little sister couldn’t read or write at the time. As it turned out, the note was still on my bed when I awoke from the nap, so I folded it up and tucked in into my white wicker purse where I carried it for the rest of the summer. 

Shopping Cart Fiasco – Learning to Listen to Yourself

When our two adventurous boys were toddlers, their father, Mick, the bearded, brown-eyed singer I’d fallen in love with a decade before, demanded I stop being constantly worried about the survival of our off-spring.  

“They’ve made it just fine so far,” he said one warm evening outside Kroger, punctuating his point by, rather roughly, I thought, depositing our two-year-old, Spencer, into the basket of a creaky shopping cart. 

In my defense, I countered silently, we had thus far prevented any plaster casts or spidery-black sutures on those precious cheeks because of the diligence and quick reflexes of their mother and the fact that the two-year-old, in particular, bounced well.  

The first time I’d left my husband alone with Arlo, our first-born, to play at the park, I had not realized I needed to explain to him that the rubber, wraparound baby swings were for one-year-olds like our son or that he was nowhere near big enough to sit on a sagging rubber seat meant for an older child and hold onto a chain. Our beautiful brown-eyed boy got his first bloody nose that day.  My husband read my mind.  

“It’s not like he broke his nose when he fell from that swing,” Mick countered while helping the now four-year-old into the cart. Arlo wrapped his arms around his bent knees and lowered those eyes onto the patches on his jeans, happy he wasn’t going to be expected to walk but pouting because his father had said no toy aisle.

I frowned at the squeaking of the wheels as we pushed the cart towards the sliding glass doors.  I pointed to the two-year-old, and commanded, “Sit.” He sat.   

“We know better now than to leave them alone with anyone else,” he said, both of us remembering our last visit to his parents in this now well-worn argument.  His mother had suggested a fifteen minute stroll down to the dry creek for some time alone only to discover on our return to the house that Spencer had burnt the palm of his chubby little hands because no adult was paying attention. 

“I wasn’t there though,” my husband continued his line of argument.  “Even when I’m here with them, you worry.” He pointed out to the busy parking lot.  “I see,” he said, “cars and parents and grocery carts out there. You,” he said, sweeping his arm across the parking lot like Vanna White, “you see death everywhere!”   

He wasn’t exaggerating.   

I did see death everywhere, especially in parking lots.  We had spent the past four years in a small Japanese town where there were few cars and the biggest danger for a child was being smothered by too much attention. Back home, however, new dangers lurked everywhere.  

“You just go shop. Alone,” Mick suggested.  “I’ve got them and we will get home a whole lot sooner if you just pick out the apples and chicken alone. Okay?”

He abruptly parked the cart by the magazine rack.  “We’ll be right here.  We’ll be fine. We can be home soon if you don’t come looking every time you hear a child crying.” I slunk away under the weight of his disdain, clutching a plastic hand cart and  thankfully-short grocery list scribbled on the back of an envelope.  He was right. I did not need to assume every crying child was yet another example of Mick being distracted at just the wrong moment. 

I first heard the clatter of metal on the tile floor as I left the cereal aisle.  Someone has knocked one of those end displays, I told myself, honing in on the bone-in chicken breasts at the meat counter.  I chose a shrink-wrapped package whose price sticker showed it to be family-sized, then turned towards the milk display. I wrinkled my nose as a sour smell hit me: milk had been spilled at my end of the store. I skirted the spill, and reminded myself of my goal. I had focussed and was still going to focus, I told myself, pushing the cart away from the sound of a child crying at the other end of the store.  “Not all crying children are mine, not all crying children are mine,” I sang to myself to the tune of the “Wheels on the bus.”  Whoever they are, they are with their mother and my boys are fine, I reassured myself.  

One gallon of two percent secured, I headed to the express lane.  I set the items on the grocery belt and tried not to look towards the gathering crowd near the far end of the store and the self-checkout.  I smiled to myself, proud of progress, then stopped the cart abruptly, and leaned back to look around the endcap filled with M & M’s and sugar-free gum to see my husband holding our two-year old.  The four-year-old had a firm grip on his father’s thigh and a store clerk was dabbing Spencer’s face with a cloth. Leaving apples, chicken, milk where I had neatly organized them, I forced myself not to run.  Mick looked up and apologetically.  The four-year-old did run and I scooped him up without breaking stride.  I looked at the overturned cart and then at my husband in horror.


The store clerk backed up to let me assess the two-year old; he would have a bloody and swollen lip but no teeth damaged, no need for stitches and neither had broken any bones, it appeared.  A miracle. 

 “I was looking at the magazines,” Mick explained.  “Arlo must have reached over for the children’s books and made the cart fall over.  They’re okay, see?” Mick turned  Spencer’s chubby, snotty cheeks towards me.  

I set Arlo down, put the crying child on my right hip and sighed as he wiped his nose on my shirt.  Arlo grabbed onto my left hand, then looked back at his father as we started for the door.  Mick took the bags of groceries from the manager who apparently had followed me from the 10 Items or Less checkout. “Did you pay…?” Mick’s voice trailed off behind me and I heard the manager encourage him to take the bags and go, please. 

I kept walking.  

“Never.” I said, without breaking stride, not really caring if anyone heard me.

“Never tell me again how to be a mother.”

You Can Have My Seat on the Mourner’s Bench

Rituals are meant to be the beginning of the healing process, not the end of it.

Rituals can be powerful for healing, and we need them to help us heal after loss and tragedy. That memorial service we hold when someone dies? It is for the living, not the person who died. Those impromptu memorials after shootings? They help us come together to start the healing.

Rituals are just the beginning, though. This is especially true when our own behavior is part of the problem, when we keep doing the same things and expecting different results. At that point, our rituals are pointless and empty. Visiting a shut-in about once a month for nearly a decade taught me this.

By the time I started preaching, James (I changed his name for this post.) and his wife of close to 60 years were both homebound shut-ins and so were on a rotation of homes for the pastor to visit after worship. Visiting their home was ever the adventure, though.

The entry of the home was a strange mix of antebellum and 70’s influences. A folding metal lawn chair leaned up against one of the original plaster columns that framed the ten-foot-high wooden doors, for example. Heavy enough to kill you if they fell on you, the doors were never allowed to completely close as long as I knew James; opening them would have required at least two grown men. A makeshift screen door was all that separated visitors from the cluttered yard and the porch strewn with more folded lawn chairs, some dead potted plants and a half-empty bag of mulch.

The first time I visited, after knocking several times, I gingerly pushed the screen door open and started towards the voice of a television newscaster beckoning me from the farthest end of the great entry hall. On my right, was a set of partially closed doors, and from them I could see Jame’s wife, whom I also had not met, but whom I was told was not interested in visitors. I later did manage to introduce myself and be admitted to her room but that was apparently only out of necessity: I was allowed in long enough to change the channel on her nearly-antebellum black and white television for her. I was only in her room long enough to realize that, though she was hooked up to an oxygen machine, sitting next to her on the bedside table was a pack of cigarettes and a full ashtray. I declined to empty the ashtray for her, and she waved me out of the room.

I passed two more sets of floor-to-ceiling wooden doors on either side of the great hall before arriving at what must have originally been the site of the grand staircase. Evidently, the top floor of the old home had been caving in, so James’ predecessors had lopped it off before moving it to the current site facing a four-lane highway. The opening to the old stairwell had been boarded up with thin, dark paneling, creating a wall for a now-enclosed back porch. From an opening on the far left I could see the shadows from the television news cast flickering. I peeked around the opening to see the now rather annoyingly loud black and white television, a tv tray lined with medicine bottles and half-opened packages of lemon cookies, and James in a recliner.

He looked up that first visit and asked, “You the lady preacher or are you here to check my sugar?”

“Lady Preacher,” I offered and he pointed to the ottoman next to his recliner, the only other piece of furniture I could see in the dark, enclosed porch under the stairwell. Sitting on the ottoman meant I was looking up at James as we chatted, as if I had been relegated to the children’s table at Thanksgiving.

In my eleven years serving that church, James sat in that recliner for every conversation. The trajectory of our conversations and our relationship, however, determined the seat I would be offered. My perch progressed over the years from the lowly ottoman to a metal and vinyl kitchen chair and eventually to a second recliner, the offer of which required clearing away a years’s worth of mass mailing ads and cookie wrappers. My own recliner. I though I had arrived.

Preaching “Scripturally”

Even after my graduation to adult seating, though, our struggle continued. Over the years James’ oldest son indicated that James did not believe I was preaching correctly. I was not, in James’ words, “preaching Scripturally.” Though James did not actually attend and only heard secondhand about my preaching from his son, evidently, when his son told him about my sermons, James’ complaint remained the same. “Not preaching Scripturally.”

Years would pass before I would be able to grasp the kind of preaching he would consider “Scriptural.”

Every sermon I preached began with a Scripture passage, intentionally allowing the text to speak for itself. I trust the Scripture to tell us something about God and ourselves. I didn’t always like what I learned but I respected it, so I knew James’ accusations either were incorrect or misinformed. His son had reassured me he was reporting my sermon Scripture choices and preaching points, so neither of us realized for some time exactly why James consistently was disappointed. It took me years to realize that, for James and likely for many others of his upbringing, church was supposed to “convict.”

Someone went to the mourner’s bench or church had not broken out.

From the moment you entered the sanctuary apparently, church was meant to be a frightening experience; God knew what you had done all week and before the sermon was over, an honest-to-God, bona fide pastor would have directed your miserable self to come forward and sit on the hardest bench, a single bench at the front of the sanctuary, the one without a back, the “Mourner’s Bench.” There you were expected to confess that you were a sinner – lower than a worm on really bad weeks in spite of being a baptized believer. You were directed then to confess, then you were forgiven and then the congregation would sing, “Shall We Gather at the River” or “Just As I Am” before heading home.

Take me to the real church. Find me a mourner’s bench. God knows what I did all week.

This process, I learned, what James would call “preaching Scripturally,” would render backsliding baptized members “Good-to-Go” for another week. Sadly, though, it was usually then a week of the same damn behavior that had made you feel so guilty the week before, but it was fine because you could count on the Preacher to help you confess and be forgiven all over again the next week. That was apparently how folks knew they’d been to church.

Sure, not everyone went to the mourner’s bench every week but someone did or preaching had not really broken out.

By the time I got there, it didn’t matter that there was no longer a mourner’s bench in the sanctuary; the expectation was still that sitting in the pew on a Sunday invited guilt and shame and the preacher must offer a chance to ask for forgiveness so folks could feel better about themselves for at least a few days.

Full disclaimer: this is not Methodist theology.

For James to feel like he’d “been to church,” he would need to go through the whole ritual, to confess and be forgiven before he was good to go. Then, though, he apparently felt that he would be free to live his life however he wanted…until he needed to come back and do it again.

Nothing in his life changed after that ritual. It was empty. This is the kind of empty ritual that God does not want, we are told in our Scriptures. As much as God loves a good ritual, even God does not seek or require ritual simply for ritual’s sake without any change in behavior. 

In Isaiah 58, “God mocks people who seek God as if they were ‘a nation that acted righteously.’  God accuses them of saying they want to be close to God, but ‘you do whatever you want…oppress all your workers… quarrel and brawl…hit each other violently.’  In classic Hebrew style, [Isaiah makes God sound] like a Yiddish grandmother saying, ‘Oy vey! You call this a fast? Enough with the thoughts and prayers, already!’ (58:5)”

Harnish, Jim, https://jimharnish.org/2022/05/26/is-god-fed-up-with-our-prayers/

Isaiah 58 is tough to read.  God rejects empty piety. God rejects our “lying down in the mourning clothing and ashes” while we still oppress, quarrel and brawl, rejects us going through the rituals but then continuing the behavior that caused us to need to mourn in the first place. More to the point today, God calls us to concrete actions, not simply thoughts and prayers:

“Isn’t this the fast I choose:

releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke,

setting free the mistreated, and breaking every yoke?

Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry

and bringing the homeless poor into your house,

covering the naked when you see them,

 and not hiding from your own family?

With God’s command comes God’s promise:

Then your light will break out like the dawn,

and you will be healed quickly….

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

you will cry for help, and God will say, I’m here.

Isaiah 58

God loves a good ritual, but even God does not seek ritual simply for ritual’s sake without any change in behavior. 

A few weeks ago, a second-grader fell at a school in the Nashville area, less than an hour from the Covenant School. She stumbled and fell, sadly, during an active shooter drill, cutting her knee and scraping her elbows, after the teacher had screamed at the children to “Run!” A sweet gesture from another child helped ease the pain and panic in that moment: one of her classmates stopped, helped the distraught child get back up and ran with her to the safe gathering spot.

The good news: her friend didn’t leave her behind.

The horrible terrible very sad news: our response to people who take AR-15’s into schools is to step up active shooter drills.

For God, our rituals mourning all of these shootings are empty and meaningless if we continue to do what we do and wonder why things never get better.  As a nation, we’ve gotten pretty good at this, though, acting as if our stint on the mourner’s bench is sufficient.

After the Covenant shooting, a large number of Nashville neighbors including many clergy colleagues participated in actions beyond candlelight vigils and prayers and leaving stuffed animals and flowers and balloons at an impromptu memorial. Thousands staged a sit-in and even marched on the state capitol. The overwhelming message to the politicians who would not consider bans on assault weapons was “Save your ‘thoughts and prayers.'”

With no apparent policy changes, though, the best efforts are still empty rituals, something we are sadly proficient at in this country.

We mourn, but we still can legally purchase an AR-15 and make up for it by telling our children to learn to run faster.

The horrible terrible very sad news is we still think the best response is teaching children to run faster and hide better.

Maybe you believe the problem is guns. Maybe you believe the problem is certain types of guns.

Maybe you support more police in school or arming teachers.

I know I want people to understand there can never be enough equipment for any SRO to combat an 18-year-old in a Kevlar vest and a helmet with an assault rifle. 

Maybe you believe the problem is broken families, no prayer in schools, the lack of mental health care, or children who come to school having never sat down with an adult to read a story book. The truth is, it’s likely some of all of these but focussing only on mental health care without limiting access to the weapons that leave small bodies in shreds is mourners’ bench behavior. That renders our thoughts and prayers empty.

What is critical here is that we do not make our rituals empty, that we do not sit on the mourner’s bench and cry and pray and then go home and keep doing what we have been doing. Because that is making a mockery of our faith and rituals.

Whichever side you fall on, God asks what are you doing to help fix it? Are you just making more room on the bench?

To lament, to pray, to mourn, and then to change nothing is to miss the point.  It is, in fact, to fail–to fail our children and to fail our God.

At the very least, educate yourself. And by that I don’t mean just read what people write who agree with you. Read what people write who don’t agree with you. Learn the actual issues in your area. Every state has different issues and different laws. More than anything, listen to people who disagree with you.

Everyone of us is afraid and sad and none of us has answers that will work for each situation, but God calls us to work together to keep our children safe. Look up your community’s Peace and Justice Center and join in. No Center? Look into starting one.

Grieve, pray, then do something that shows you have truly taken in the gravity of the situation; but for God’s sake, let us not keep acting as if nothing has happened.   

Our children

need us to

figure it out.

  1. Nancy Bradshaw Avatar
    Nancy Bradshaw

    Challenging piece about an horrific plague on our land. What are our lawmakers thinking? They hear the voices of the people and yet do little to address the problem. I need to do more, I know. Letter writing is just not getting it either. Thanks for your focus on what’s going wrong in our world.

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  2. Martha Ann Pilcher Avatar
    Martha Ann Pilcher

    Amen!

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  3. D-Day Promises, Guilt and Forgiveness – Emptying The Backpack Avatar
    D-Day Promises, Guilt and Forgiveness – Emptying The Backpack

    […] a previous post, (“You Can Have My Seat on the Mourner’s Bench,”) I introduced James, (not his real name), who struggled mightily with ongoing guilt and grief […]

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  4. D-Day Promises, Guilt and Forgiveness – Eighty Years Later – Emptying The Backpack Avatar
    D-Day Promises, Guilt and Forgiveness – Eighty Years Later – Emptying The Backpack

    […] a previous post, (“You Can Have My Seat on the Mourner’s Bench,”) I introduced James, (not his real name), who struggled mightily with ongoing guilt and grief […]

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Be the pebble. One answer to the unimaginable.

For several months last year, I was invited to join a group of women from all over western and middle Tennessee, some clergywomen, some lay leaders in their churches.  We gathered virtually because we shared a sad truth: a colleague and friend had been taken from us suddenly, shot in her own driveway during a carjacking.

I had not known any of these women before this group convened, but I am so very grateful that they all agreed to convene for those few months – and to invite me – to share our grief and pain and try to make some, any, if possible, sense of this tragedy. Some of the participants had known this woman for years; others of us had only known her a short while, but we all grieved what felt like a future filled with hope and ministry. She was likely going to be a Bishop some day, not because she was someone who was well-loved but because she was someone who loved well. That future was denied suddenly not by someone who had judged her ministry or intentions or love as lacking, but by a total stranger, someone who never had and now never would feel the love she had to offer him.

Within just a few weeks following her murder, we stepped into a virtual room, and invoked the words so many of us had shared in the funerals we had presided over. We affirmed that we had come together in our grief, acknowledging our human loss and praying that God would grant us grace. We also prayed that, in our pain we may find comfort, and in our sorrow, we might find hope.  We especially, collectively, wanted to find ways to honor our friend. 

It’s not necessarily a new idea to say we are called to honor those who are now gone who’ve loved, nurtured, forgiven or supported and encouraged us by doing the same. It just may be a bit tougher to process our emotions after the loss is a shock or especially an act of violence, because violence always leaves in its wake more victims than are seen by the naked eye. Be assured, most of us could acknowledge our privilege in not facing this kind of loss before; we also recognized what a gift it was that we could take the needed time to grieve and to find some guidance and companions for this process. Plenty of folks do not share that luxury, we knew. 

Nevertheless, to say the sheer aggression and randomness of this event knocked us down is insufficient. We all know that bad things happen to even the best of people, but somehow some of us thought – hoped – there was a line the people of God would not cross. I mean, if you’re willing to kill a preacher, who stands a chance? We were shaken individually and collectively and so I am grateful that our colleague’s legacy brought us together. A few of the women realized that, if our friend had been the one left in shock and pain, this is what she’d do. She would gather us all in. She was all about sharing, listening, reflecting and holding hands in our fear and our pain. Over the next few months, then, we talked about how this trauma affected us, mentally, spiritually, emotionally and theologically.  We seemed to know that she would encourage us to ask our questions, something most of us in this world have been conditioned to avoid, even if we do have the time. Through our theological and faith journeys, though, through pursuing our callings, many of us in the group had been exposed to and become somewhat practiced in reflection, in the art of asking questions, and, perhaps most importantly, in sitting with questions that are not accompanied by satisfying answers. 

Aggressive, blunt, unanswered and unanswerable questions most definitely were part of these group meetings; they sat next to us, sometimes gently nudging us, sometimes poking us with bony fingers, often angering and annoying us, always taking up space and reminding us they were not going away.  So, we chose to embrace them, to welcome them into our space, albeit a bit begrudgingly, buoyed by the fact that we were not alone.  

“After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.”

Remen, Rachel Naomi. My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging . Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

We shared from various resources: prayers, poems, stories, theological pieces and we asked ourselves, How then shall we live?

To get there, we shared questions about our colleague like: How can one person be someone whom everyone felt like they knew? This woman saw you. I could easily spend the rest of my life trying to see every person that I encounter as well as she did; it is a spiritual practice that I will likely never master but one that she embodied. She saw each of us and even if you only met her once, you left her presence knowing she still somehow held you as tightly and lovingly as she did everyone she saw. I would have liked to ask her more about this; how did she manage it? Did she consciously focus only on who was right in front of her? How was she able to tune out the rest of the world so successfully as to make you feel like not so much the center of the universe but seen. And heard. She saw you. Most of us go through life not feeling truly seen or heard and yet, sadly, that is often all we want. Many an argument or estrangement likely would be quelled or mended if each participant were able to take a turn seeing and hearing the other fully. She seemed to know that.

How Then Shall We Live?

Throughout the sessions over last fall, I found myself counting how many people who were now missing from my life after this year: friends, colleagues, family members.

Sadly, I am grateful that a couple of them are no longer here to harm others. I spent a great deal of my life learning how NOT to follow in those footsteps. I also, though, came to recognize them as human beings, not monsters, and to acknowledge I have my own failings. I hate knowing that. I hate knowing I am capable of being ugly and of wounding others.  I hate knowing that too often what annoys me in others is what annoys me about myself.  All of that knowledge means I must go forward with self-assessment that is as rigorous as my judgment of others AND I must offer grace that is as unearned as the grace I receive. The question there was what did I learn about myself from that person?

I am grateful though to declare that most of those whom I have lost have blessed me.  All of those I lost this past twelve months, including my colleague, I now realize, left me with the question on my life: how will I live going forward so as to reflect how I have been changed by their influence on my life? How, then, will I live now in light of what they taught me, whether it be because I want to honor them or because I want to never fall into their footsteps: what gift will I give the world now that they are no longer here?  

Photo by Scott Webb on Pexels.com

Questions, then, I thought, might be the answer, if that’s possible.  I shared with the group one of the understandings of a Scripture passage that another colleague had helped me to see differently years ago.  The Scripture was about the widow and the judge in Luke 18:1-8.  The story is often interpreted that the judge is God and the widow has to badger God – the judge – to get heard and to receive justice.  Another colleague years ago saw the story differently and preached that the widow in the story instead was God and God (the widow) would continue to beseech the powers that be (the judges) in our world to do the right thing.  God would continue to be the pebble in the shoe, she preached, that made us stop in our tracks and take care of that annoying pain that we feel every step we take.  God will continue to try to make us stop long enough perhaps to think, to listen, to pray, to see one another.  The story when I read it now reminds me, calls me, to be the pebble, to keep the hard, stony, annoying truths in front of folks I know.  

God calls us to BE the pebble. Ask – lovingly – the difficult questions. Keep the hard, stony, annoying truths in front of the folks we know.

We lamented that there was no going back to our blissful ignorance, no chance now we could pretend we or those whom we loved were safe.  One thing that is certain about hatred, ugliness, violence, is that once you know, you can’t “unknow.” Most of us in our world today learn at such early ages that violence and meanness and the ability to harm others is part of our world but being the target or even knowing the target of someone else’s violent behavior, even and maybe especially if that target appears random, moves us into darker places emotionally, spiritually, mentally.  

One of the toughest conversations was, no surprise, about guns and gun violence. I do not believe I am breaking confidence to say that we were keenly aware of the difficulty we live into everyday in our country of how to deal with what has become an epidemic.  

He was just a child still himself who pulled the trigger and took this life. In light of how much gun violence has become part of so many children’s lives, I offered the image of our society as a body where this bullet’s wound was not the only injury or illness that needed to be addressed in this tragedy. The image of a body with multiple system failures came to mind for me as we talked about how we had failed this child as well, the child who had murdered her, lamenting how he had gotten to that place, into that car, with that gun. The questions became: What had gotten him to the point where another human being was worth less than that car?  Don’t we need to know that process? Where in his young life was he ever seen? 

The questions we all needed to ask ourselves and one another became: What had gotten him to the point where another human being was worth less than a car? Don’t we need to know that process? Where in his young life was he ever seen?

For help with tough questions, I suggested this resource:  “When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor’s Journey into the Realities of Gun Violence,” by Taylor Schumann, a victim of gun violence, a Christian and a strong advocate for the right to own and bear arms.  Her offering in this book is as honest a discussion of faith and firearms as I have seen thus far and it is a true gift to those who do not know what to say but feel called to participate in reflection and discussion.  We put seatbelts in our cars to help protect our children when auto accidents were the number one killer; we need to stop the yelling and figure this out for our children’s sake.  Schumann offers intelligent, faith-led, personal and compelling points to add to the discussion, pebbles, if you will, that we can cast into our collective path. 

Moving Forward

How then would we go forward was the overarching question. How we each had thought we would be going forward in our lives was mostly changed but not canceled, we realized, but this sudden loss. I grieved having postponed working together until after my retirement.  I had so many questions I was looking forward to asking her when we would be working together. Each of us was challenged to ask ourselves, “How will I live now?” We realized we had already started moving forward and had chosen to live differently by simply inviting and agreeing to meet over the course of those months, by sharing and holding one another in grief, by sharing resources that inspired us (and often which we hoped might answer some of those pesky questions). Already we were living with intention, living in response to this trauma and tragedy, living in a way that would honor her (and more importantly we knew to her,) living in a way that recognized the power and gift of connecting. We would commit each of us to continue using our platforms (sermons, Bible studies, book clubs) to replicate these conversations, to offer them to others, to hold hands with, to sit with, to see each person who came before us and to ask the questions.

Photo by Elle Hughes on Pexels.com

For myself, I believe my beloved colleague would encourage me this Christmas and every Christmas going forward to seek to “Be that pebble in the shoes of those who are in power and ask the questions that need asking.” No question, my friend saw me or you like she saw everyone, it seemed; she made each of us feel seen.  Spending time in her presence, though, also meant you had to keep stooping down to remove the occasional pebble from your shoe because it was either that or limp forever.  She did this lovingly and you knew as you stooped down to scoop out that pebble that she meant to be loving to you and to everyone else who might be affected. “It’s all right,” she seemed to be saying in a loving and gentle way, “I’ll wait while you tend to that.” 

Who knew that a handful of pebbles could be such a sacred Christmas gift?