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Gratitude

Every night before I go to sleep, I say my prayers. It’s been my habit as long as I can remember, even back to the age of four! Mostly I pray for peace. Oh Lord let it come soon all over your world! But my prayers always end in a series of “thank yous” to the giver of life and all that comes with it. Sometimes my list of things to be grateful for is so long that I fall asleep before I get to amen.

Today I am feeling gratitude for every English teacher I ever had. In my school system which is Westside Community Schools, aka, District 66 here in Omaha, I had some of the finest English teachers who ever practiced the craft. There were Sarol Wiltse in seventh grade, Sid Dunn in the eighth (and we’re friends on Facebook!), Ed Mansur, Don Kolterman, Bob Dornacker and Richard Bock through the final four years. All of them stressed spelling, grammar, punctuation and the nuts and bolts of the language. But they also taught us to write: to compose, to narrate a story, to explain a concept, to argue a point, to express ourselves. I will always be grateful for what they imparted to me, which is a love of the language put down for others to enjoy.

I have a younger sister who had many of those teachers as well. (Most of my sisters had them in fact!) She is the same sister I used to torture with my new found writing skills when I sent her own letters home from summer camp back to her with corrections marked. It still makes me smile to remember how imperious I was about spelling. Okay, I still am. (Sidebar: Please folks! Remember the difference between its and it’s, your and you’re; there, their and they’re. They mean different things!)

That's Sally working the field on her tractor.

That’s Sally working the field on her tractor.

That same sister whose name is Sally is now a published author. (I encourage you to buy her book, “Windows in the Loft.” I may be slightly prejudiced but she is very good. And her grammar and spelling are above reproach.) I am so proud of her! And I’m grateful for the person she is today. She has overcome so much and she is living a life that suits her to a T. She also has a wonderful blog where she chronicles her adventures living on a farm in eastern Colorado. You can follow her at sygoerner.wordpress.com. Read it. It’s authentic Sally.

That's Sally on her horse.

That’s Sally on her horse.

And so I have started this blog. I have found the short items I post on Facebook to be good practice, but over the last months I have experienced the strong desire to stretch myself and really work on writing at more length. Compiling stories of people I have known from years ago and people who have been part of my journey in recent days, is my way of loving the world one person at a time. I think they are stories worth sharing because the people are worth knowing. People like Ms. Wiltse, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Mansur, Mr. Kolterman, Mr. Dornacker and Mr. Bock…and Sally. For each of them, I am grateful.

Fragile

Aleppo porcelainI have been reading stories all day long about what is happening in Israel and Palestine, what so many of us refer to as “The Holy Land.” It’s awful. Horrendous. Unspeakable. Tragic. There are so many words to describe what is happening to actual flesh-and-blood human beings in an exchange of bombs and missiles between people whose family histories can be traced back to the same beginnings. They are brothers and sisters, just as we are with them.

I pray, I weep, I mourn. Some days I can’t do anything else. “How long, oh Lord?” is a constant thought.

There are wars going on in lands where I have walked with my brothers and sisters in Christ and they are holy lands to me. Syria. Iraq. Lebanon. The same bone-shattering weapons are flung back and forth between people who have shared the land for centuries. Homes lost. Churches and mosques blown to bits. Cities flattened. A generation of children who, if they haven’t already been killed, will spend their early years in shattered shells of buildings and minds. It’s all so fragile and tonight all I can think of is the broken pieces.

I wrote this poem after a visit to Lebanon when the only way I could visit the pastor I had met in Aleppo, Syria, in 2010 was to hear his voice on a phone. In that long ago summer – only four years ago! – we walked the streets of his city. We worshiped in his church. We saw the reconstruction of a high school for boys. We shopped for treasures in a souk whose aisles stretched into the eternity of the maze it was. I was looking for a set of the small cups and saucers that we were served coffee in everywhere we went. My shopping excursion paid off and I brought home a set of blue and gold china cups and saucers, which sit in my cupboard. Such fragile things, but they are a constant reminder of what has been lost. The church building has been destroyed. The school was bombed and ransacked. The ancient souk is no more. So many have died and the war continues.

Aleppo Porcelain

They sit ensconced upon my shelf
In glorious gold and blue
Perfectly matched for twelve of us
For tea and coffee too

We searched for them inside the souq
We went from stall to stall
‘twas in Aleppo, Syria
Me and Kate and all

We had been served so many times
In every place we went
Dark coffee with such sumptuous sweets
Hospitably, time well spent.

When I look upon the pictures now
Of Aleppo in the news
I see the shattered buildings
Broken homes and scattered shoes
People running for their lives
Their idea of normal is lost
Children crying, people dying
This is what war has cost.

The cups are gone, the saucers too,
The souq is history
All are now but faded scenes
Inside my memory.

But there is another memory
Of another cup and plate
A reminder of a sacrifice
Made on an earlier date
Of one who spilled his blood and life
That we might know forgiveness
The gifts upon these precious plates
Would remind us of the richness
Of life poured out for you and me
In sacrifice divine
Redeeming love for all on earth
For each of us for all time.

Each night as I raise prayers for peace
I ask this Lord of life
That he would send his spirit to earth
To end the days of strife
That he would show us how to serve
With fragile cup and plate
The kind of love he modeled
The love that conquers hate.

 

St. Tekla and Elias

The icon of St. Tekla decoupaged on a wood inlaid frame.

The icon of St. Tekla decoupaged on a wood inlaid frame.

I heard the story of St. Tekla (Taqla) while having tea and coffee with my traveling companions in Damascus, Syria, this past January. We had journeyed to Lebanon as partner churches of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon from the U.S., Sweden and Switzerland, to hear how the church is dealing with the war in Syria, now in its fourth year. As part of this encouragement trip, sixteen of us traveled to Damascus on the highway from Beirut. As you can imagine, the journey was a lonely one with very little traffic, most of it going the other way to leave Syria.

When we arrived at the immigration station just outside of Damascus, we were met by the Minister of Protocol for President Assad. We enjoyed dark, sweet Arabic coffee and sweets with him before making our final journey to our hotel in Damascus. It is simply the Middle East hospitality which you find everywhere. Indeed, when we had a meeting with President Assad himself the next day, we were served the best tea in beautiful china cups as we had 72 minutes of question and answer with him, all in regard to the status of the church. But I digress from St. Tekla…

On a walking tour of the Christian quarter of Damascus, we visited the house of Ananias. This is the very same place mentioned in Acts chapter 9, where Saul of Tarsus is baptized and renamed Paul. This Paul would go on to be a great apostle of Jesus, starting churches all over what is now Turkey. Paul himself discipled many, and the story is that young Tekla was one of these students. She professed her faith, and as many in those first centuries were, was persecuted for it. She was marked for death by her family and by the man they wanted her to marry. She escaped, as legend tells it, through a miraculous opening in a mountain into a place now known as Maaloula in Syria. There is a monastery there bearing her name, Mar Taqla, and her remains are said to be entombed there. Considering the value of a woman in those days, it was a wonderful story for this woman of faith to hear. (Maaloula might have been a refuge for St. Tekla in the first century, but it is not a refuge anymore. Just Google Maaloula and you can find stories of what happened there.)

Just like the coffee, tea and sweets at the border and in the president’s office, this story was told over coffee and tea at a table on the street outside the house of Ananias. Some of our cohort had been shopping for local crafts in a small craft store right next to the house of Ananias. Indeed, we had shopped there more than three years earlier on another trip, that one made just months before the Arab Spring and all its aftermath, including the war in Syria.

Elias in his then craft shop with the inlaid box he made and I bought for Steve, signed on the bottom by Elias.

Elias in his then craft shop with the inlaid box he made and I bought for Steve, signed on the bottom by Elias.

On that trip we had shopped in that same store, and as it was small, after making our purchases left the store to make room for others. My friend Sue and I walked just across the narrow street to another craft shop and met Elias, who showed us how they make the beautiful wood inlay on boxes and crosses and backgammon sets, souvenirs to bring home from this ancient city. I bought a box for my husband and had Elias sign the bottom. It is a treasured possession!

As we were sitting out on the street, enjoying the tea and coffee served by the friendly shopowner, it struck me that he and the shop looked familiar. It was the same shop! Our server was Elias, the woodworker, only now due to the war there are no tourists to buy his wares, just some random Christians from another land sitting at his table while mortars exploded in the distance. His life has been reduced to selling coffee and tea to area residents who wander by. I was so excited to see him again that I jumped up and overwhelmed him with an embrace. His smile spoke volumes and though I don’t speak Arabic and he doesn’t speak English, we both understood the other.

Elias and me on the street outside what is now his coffee shop.

Elias and me on the street outside what is now his coffee shop.

As we continued to sit and enjoy the beverages, Elias went back in the shop and brought out a dusty laminated icon. Yes. It was St. Tekla. That was how I heard her story. I wanted to pay him for it and he refused. It was a gift. Another in the party suggested I could get an authentic icon at an antique shop. But that’s not what I wanted. I had been given this gift by my brother in Christ and therein was its value.

Because of this brother, I learned St. Tekla’s story. And now you know his story. And his name…Elias.

Weeding

Yesterday I posted on Facebook that weeding isn’t for sissies. That comment was provoked by spending parts of Saturday and Sunday afternoons out pulling weeds. Did I mention that it was hot and humid? Well it was. Temps were in the upper 80s and 90s and the humidity seemed to match. They were the kind of days when you could take a shower and feel clean and refreshed and then step outside and feel like you had caught yourself in an early episode of dementia. “Wow! I think I should have showered before starting out today…”

So weeding isn’t for sissies. You have to stick with it to make some progress and you are going to get dirty and sweaty and mosquitoes will bite you. That’s the chore you just signed up for. Mosquitoes alone will keep the delicate from venturing forth. It bears repeating: it’s not for sissies.

I have a lot of flowerbeds that I joyfully look forward to working in every spring and summer. I love the parade of blossoms as each plant in turn puts on its show. “Look at me!” shout my tree peonies. “No! Over here!” tempt the columbine. Astilbe, aster, brunnera, caryopteris, cranesbill, hemerocallis, lavender, monarda, plumeria…each in its own season. And they are under constant attack from a stealthier foe: Weeds are much quieter, not wanting the attention until they have amassed such an army that total domination seems at hand. Funny thing is, many of them have lovely flowers as well, usually in shades of purple. The blossoms on the dreaded creeping charlie actually complement the orange and peach hues of the daylilies. And yet they must be pulled to advance the growth of the good flowers.

It’s not just for my good pleasure that I weed on days that keep the sissies inside. My neighbors also take care of their flowerbeds and those sweet flowers on the other side of the fence between us were being advanced upon by that same creeping charlie. Something had to be done and so I did it. Some days being a good neighbor isn’t for sissies either.

Mother

I work with some really wonderful people at the church where I am on staff. This week has been a particularly difficult one for some of them. One of them experienced the loss of her mother just yesterday after a battle with cancer that lasted over a year. The end came quietly in her home, with one of her daughters by her side.

Another one of these amazing people is sitting at the side of her mother-in-law, also soon to take her last labored breath after a bone marrow transplant of less than a year ago fails in her body. Her whole family – husband, children, grandchildren, siblings – are at her side, singing hymns, praying, sharing smiles and stories, even as she takes one breath, and then another, that will be her last on this earth.

Still one more of these co-workers of mine just became a grandmother for the seventh time, her own daughter’s giving birth having been a dramatic change from previous births. This grandmother of seven is now preparing for the death of her own mother as her aging body and mind, now clouded by dementia, slows to a stop.

Three women having lost or preparing to lose a mother, all showing me a picture of holding on and letting go in very different ways. All showing the amazing grace that defines motherhood.

My own mother died when I was seven, leaving behind seven children. My memories of her are scarce but precious: A smile, the gentle pumping of a treadle sewing machine, the long phone cord stretched across the room as she talked on the old kitchen wallmount while continuing to wash dishes or prepare meals for the army she and dad had brought into the world.

All these women experienced the joys and sorrows of being mothers and left their imprint on their children.

I, myself, am not a mother. I came to the place of marriage at 43, too old to have children and not wanting to experience that journey. Maybe just too selfish to put so much of myself into caring for or worrying about another life in need of so much.

In offering prayers for these special women yesterday I found these words of Julian of Norwich: “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.” And so when I pray at night, I will remember that not only do I pray to God my father, but to God my mother. And I will take comfort in that. And the faces that come to my mind as I pray will be of these amazingly grace-filled women who have shown me a new face of God.