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Worry Beads

05 Tuesday May 2009

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I am preoccupied by knowing truth, especially my own.  But I wonder:  Is it possible to fully know and understand our original true selves?  And if not, how does one really follow that bit of Shakespearean advice – “to thine own self be true?” 

Like a bunch of Greek worry beads, I move what I believe to be beads of truth from one end to the other.  Back and forth they go, but so far, I’ve nothing to show for my effort.  Not even less worries.  I think I’m waiting for that proverbial lighting bolt to strike, so I can cry “Eureka,” then in a mad dash, grab some pen and paper to get it all down before I forget my discovery.  It would be ideal to write about self-knowledge with a sense of direction rather than from this feeling of lostness. 

Two of my worry beads are biblical sound bites from Jesus.  The first is a promise — “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  And the second, which is housed in another Gospel, so certainly not said in the same breath as the first, is this foregone conclusion, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”  In some hard to express way, these two beads of truth sit together, one against the other. 

This past January, I watched two of my grands on their last day of Christmas vacation.  Jackson is a wise third-grader and his younger sister Karson is growing up fast — this coming fall she’ll begin kindergarten.  Karson and I are ‘old’ pals, as I began watching her a few days a week from the time she was two.  Our days then were filled with just everyday togetherness,  a mix of chores and playtime activities that always included watching a series of favorite cartoons on afternoon television.  And now, with both of them coming to visit, I chose to do nothing more than serve up the best dish of everyday life that a grandma can serve.    

While we were watching cartoons together, Karson plopped down beside me on the couch, and without taking her eyes from the cartoon, kept scooting closer and closer, until her body formed itself next to mine.  Still looking staight at the television set, I heard her whisper  “I love you”   in such a breathless rush, it was as if her love had just bubbled up out of her heart and slipped  off of her tongue, as if her scooting had just jarred her words free.  No big production, no thought of gain, no thought of holding back.  Out came her love as natural as breathing, which I imagine may be something like the way love reigns in the kingdom of God.       

As I sit muddled in my thinking on truth, it strikes me that Karson and I were just two beads of truth sitting close together that January day; Karson was the bead of trusting love, who hasn’t yet learned to be self-conscious in wearing her heart on her sleeve.  And that makes me the wizened old woman, who knows truth when she hears it.  

Every young child worth their salt knows that where love reigns, there’s always a happily ever after.  And every wise grandma worth her salt knows when to surrender to love and give up the lost cause of knowing it all.  Like Karson, I need to just freely share my love the truest way I know how.  And stop worrying.  

Magical Suitcases

25 Saturday Apr 2009

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Soul Care

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In a couple of weeks, my ‘noisy’ Ignatius retreat will be over.  My bags are a little lighter for the journey but I’ve still plenty to unpack, which will help make room for the ‘spiritual writings’ I can once again read. 

 

In anticipation of this, I’ve set about collecting old favorites and buying a few new ones. For some reason, I’m especially drawn toward picking up writings of Evelyn Underhill.  Someone once told me that Ms. Underhill called God by the name ‘Reality.’  I want to know more about how she came to her God name just as I wish to know more about anyone who found God real enough to name ‘Reality’.       

 

Being real is important to me, which goes hand in hand with this idea of being more comfortable in my own skin.  I think my journey with Ignatius has helped with both, though God knows, my work in both areas has only just begun.  My pretending to be something other than who I am began early in life.  First grade, actually.  So I’ve acquired more than a few masks and costumes and magical tricks along the way.  It will take a lifetime to unpack my acccumulations and my tendencies.      

 

For instance, why do I begin thinking about moving every spring?  I’ve worked so hard on this lovely old house we live in, and while some work remains, I know the lion’s share is already done.  It’s hard for me to rest on my laurels.  I want to go out and buy another historical ‘diamond in the rough’ and start all over.  Hocus Pocus, presto chango:  The ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan.  The house next door would be a good duck candidate.   But my neighbor is probably a ‘lifer’.  And this much neglected house will outlive both my neighbor and my own magician’s interest.     

 

Then there’s my writing.  Right now I have a writing project in mind.  And even though I began it about a week ago, I can’t motivate myself to get back to it.  I’ve no excuses other than fear or lack of interest, because with my husband gone, I’ve time on my hands to devote to it.  Time and a too quiet house, with a new writing desk pushed into the corner, with shades drawn.  I’ve all the necessary ingredients, but no interest in the task at hand.  

 

I grow bored easily, and while I enjoy the creative process, the creating process can be a lot of drudgery.  Except those times when I begin writing words I had no notion to write.  Sometimes words just come and leave my fingers all tingly from their writing.  And I imagine some of those ‘spiritual’ writers that I long to read know exactly what I’m writing about.  This may be part of the reason I wish to cozy up to them right now.  I want to unpack their thoughts and let them rest in my own mind and heart.  And maybe something of their experiences and words will stir me to unpack and write about my own sacred souvenirs. 

 

Sounds a little like magic.  But probably more like ‘Reality.’

The Final Word?

22 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

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There is something different about daddy. 

 

This week and last, daddy appears sad.   His eyes look sunken.  When I speak to him, it takes a while to capture his attention.  He goes from hanging on, as if he never wants to let go of my hand, to an almost complete withdrawal that is hard to describe.  While he’s there in body, his mind seems far away.  It’s a kind of blowing hot and cold, and I’m not sure if there’s a way to adjust the thermostat or whether we are past the point of fine-tuning.  Is Daddy’s body on its last legs?

 

I am sad.  Yet, I know Dad will be okay.  Not because he will continue to hobble along in this world, but because I possess this abiding sense that Dad’s life will continue in some altered state once his soul flies free of his body.  Daddy may be taking the first steps of his final dance on earth, but there will be other dances with partners more attractive than his much ignored walker and the walls and pieces of furniture he uses as support to shuffle his way around the house.

 

Some will find this all to be just ‘wishful thinking’ on my part.  “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”   Or the cuter variation my friend Ann recited with her daughters, back in the days of young family when her husband Jack was still alive:  “If wishes were Crisco, then beggars would fry.”  In response to either of these proverbs, I would simply smile and echo the words my youngest ‘grand’ so often says.  “That’s otay.”  I’m not too bothered about what other’s choose to think about matters, like life after death, that are based solely on belief rather than first-hand experience.  It’s just as easy to believe as to not.  Or as expressed more eloquently by Blaise Pascal:  “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.”

 

But there are those near death experiences one reads about.  And those personal stories I’ve heard from others.  One story was from Ann in fact.  Hard to believe it happened almost four years ago now.  Her son-in-law Stuart was on his last legs, after a two year battle with leukemia.  When no more could be done, M.D. Anderson released him to Hospice.  And in an apartment within the Houston Medical Center complex, his wife and children gathered around Stuart to say a month’s worth of final good-byes. 

 

Close to the end, perhaps it was during Stuart’s last days, he shared a final gift with his gathered family.  Stuart told Ann that he had seen Jack, who by that time had been dead fourteen years.  From all my reading on death during my time as a Stephen Minister, this ability for the dying to see the dead is not uncommon.  I read a book written by two hospice nurses that reported case after case of near death experiences like the one Stuart shared with his family.  I pulled it out last night and begin flipping through it, wondering if my sister might like to skim though it as well.  Appropriately, the book is called Final Gifts.

 

This word ‘final’ that weaves through my words — final dance, final goodbye and final gift – I should not have used if death is not the final word.