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MISS LUCY'S REAL LIFE BEAR ENCOUNTER

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:00:53 GMT

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PROGRESS

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:40:45 GMT

My grandparents were born at the turn of the century and lived long lives—I used to marvel at the degree of change they experienced in their lifetimes. They were born into homes without telephones or automobiles. I didn’t figure I’d ever see that amount of transformation in my life—everything we needed had already been invented.

But I grew up in a home without air-conditioning, as did most of my friends. I remember hot sweaty nights, lying on the top of the bed without covers, a fan pointed directly at me. My parents later had central air installed, but when I got my married it was back to the fans. On particularly hot summer nights we’d run the tub full of cold water and soak in it every few hours. After a few years, we got two noisy window air conditioners—a big one in the living room and a small one in our bedroom. The roar in your ears was a trade-off for the heat. My two oldest sons may remember a few years without an air-conditioned house, but the youngest has always had the luxury of central air.

I saw my first microwave oven on the day my mother took me to see The Sound of Music at the Trail Theater in downtown St. Joseph, in the mid 1960s. They were doing a demonstration at the appliance store next door to the theater, and had drawn quite a crowd. People were taking turns crowding around to watch cupcakes rise right before their eyes, and then oohing and aahing as the salesmen reached in and pulled the dishes out without any hotpads.

But it was years before the microwave took off among the people I knew—what use really was it? Cupcakes could be made easily in a conventional oven. My parents got us one as a wedding gift fifteen years after that. I quickly discovered it could do more than bake cupcakes.

When I was a senior in high school, I got a job in a local hardware store. This was a big step up from working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which I did for three years. The owner bought a Betamax video camera, and I was quite enthralled—this was the first video camera I had ever seen. She hooked it up so that she could watch the register from the office. I think it was after that that I began to hear about people recording TV programs to play back later whenever they wanted! I was used to having only three channels, and knowing if you missed something you had wanted to see, you missed it.

I remember later, when my boys were growing up, telling them that I had grown up without a microwave and without a VCR. I remember being asked, with wide-eyed wonder, “How did you live?” Actually, we managed quite well, thank you!

I think if I were to tell a child today the same thing, the question would instead be, “What’s a VCR?” They’re now obsolete.

And can we imagine a life today without the internet? Without information on every subject imaginable available instantly? My dad loved his set of World Book Encyclopedias, and referred to them often. Does anyone today have encyclopedias? Why?

It’s progress. That is, I think so.

SMEDES

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:45:42 GMT

I am taking a break from practicing the violin to write this blog. Yes, the violin. It’s been a lifelong desire, and I have just had my third lesson. And I can verify that the comments I have heard all my life about listening to a beginning violinist practice being a very annoying experience are indeed true. I once thought my opportunity to learn had passed me by. But I have changed my thinking. My new way of thinking has influenced me in many ways, and so at the ripe old age of....(hey, wait a minute, I don’t have to tell you how old I am!)...I am beginning a new instrument.

For—God so loved the world that He gave His only Son! That whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have EVERLASTING LIFE! I am going to live forever! Not as a disembodied spirit, but as a physical being, inhabiting the good earth that my Father created. So I might as well begin a pursuit that might take me a long, long time to perfect. Why not? I’ve got FOREVER.

Presenting my body to God is the spiritual way to worship Him. I glorify God in my body. The message at church last night was phenomenal—revealed all kinds of crazy thinking we have about our bodies. The message Theology of the Body will help renew your mind to God’s view of the bodies He created for us—not base, nasty things, but what He called at the moment of creation "very good." (get it on the WOLC podcast Tuesday)

So today I happened to be reading Lewis Smedes’ Keeping Hope Alive For a Tomorrow We Cannot Control. I found Smedes less than a year ago, and he has been a real treasure. He is not a new author, in fact, died a few years ago in his eighties after a long career teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, with many books to his credit. I read his autobiography, My God and I, which was finished just a few months before his death. Every page was a delight. He was a highly intelligent and highly trained theologian with a profoundly simple childlike faith and a vibrant relationship with his God, and an ability to express deep truth in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. I loved a passage I came across today, even read it aloud to Brian, who liked it very much as well.

He tells the story of driving from Los Angeles to Michigan a few years previously--a five day trip, and making the decision shortly after setting out to spend those days in complete solitude--no music, no talk radio, no phone calls, just a time of solitude.

".....I prayed some to God and talked to myself a lot. What mostly came to me, however, were not deep thoughts, but gospel songs that we sang at the Berean Church in Muskegon, Michigan, to which my mother shuffled the five of us children two miles each way twice every Sunday and where, no matter how it had begun, the sermon ended with either the Battle of Armageddon or the rapture of the saints. So I broke my silence by croaking such verses as I could still recall, surprised at how much the old hymns of coming glory still affected me. One of my favorites was "Beulah Land."

Oh Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land,
As on the highest mount I stand.
I look away across the sea
Where mansions are prepared for me,
And view the shining glory shore,
My heaven, my home, forever more.

I surely did like to sing hymns about that shining glory shore back at the Berean Church. But now I was singing about it while driving through the pure, purple canyons of Utah, with their pinstriped shadows drawn by a softly dying sun along the screen of parallel crevices in the eastern canton walls, and I knew for sure that I did not now and never really had ever really wanted to live in Beulah Land. Not as a forever guest. This world of Utah canyons and the society of human beings with bodies is where I want to live, linked one day with all of God’s children in a society where justice and peace embrace.

The Bible offers a vision, not only of the soul’s ascent to heaven, but of God’s coming to Earth. It is the hope that He will come back to fill the world with Himself and make the whole world good again, from sea to shining sea. A place where all of His children will finally feel at home together. And at home with Him.

The way I read the Bible, heaven—the place of departed spirits—is a sublime intermezzo. A rest stop where our spirits learn to enjoy God while we wait in bodiless patience for God to shape His earth into His peaceable kingdom. So, when it comes to my forever life, it is in this world, repaired and renewed, my Father’s world, my native place, where I hope to live it."

Bravo, Smedes! I couldn’t agree more! Thank God for the gift of His beautiful creation! Thank God for our bodies that can sing and dance and shout and roll in the grass and eat fresh raspberries right off the bush. Thank God that even though the body I have right now may wear out, He is going to resurrect it to newness of life, and I will be able to sing and dance and shout and roll in the grass and eat raspberries right off the bush (which I did today!), knowing that my resurrected body will never wear out. My resurrected body can play the violin, and I’m starting NOW, because there’s no time like the present.

As I typed these words, the man who lives with me walked into the room and spied my violin lying on the sofa. He picked it up and tried to play it. And I have to say that the sounds I have been listening to while I have been practicing are FAR more melodious and appealing after just three lessons than the sounds he made! I’m getting better! I’m making progress! Every day in every way, as I yield my life to God and dedicate my life to pursuing Him. And that’s exciting.

MENAGERIE UPDATE

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:00:18 GMT

Salman Rushdie, our pet raccoon, has returned--that is, has emerged from hiding, and is once again enjoying sharing meals with the three cats at the back door. The animals are very relaxed and cordial with one another--they seem to be unaware of any differences in species. It's good to see them interacting without prejudice and intolerance, much better than some people I know. A human guest at our house last night made some disparaging comments about Salman and even made threats involving firearms. We made it clear how we felt about that.

The big news is that Salman has apparently given BIRTH since she last visited. Therefore Salman has become Salmonella!

I feel a tad guilty saying this, but I do hope she doesn't start bringing the kids around. Enough is enough.

St. Francis of Assisi

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:31:44 GMT

One night last week I walked through the kitchen and glanced through the sliding glass door where Brian was sitting reading on the deck. I noticed one of our three cats, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, eating from the bowl of food by the backdoor, just a few feet away from where Brian sat. But I looked again at the cat—his tail looked a little fuller and fatter, and I moved around to see his face. It wasn’t Fyo, the calico cat, it was a RACCOON! I rapped on the window to get Brian’s attention—he turned around and then yelled “Hey!” The critter looked at him calmly for a minute, and then stuck his face back in the bowl. “Hey, get out of here!” Brian yelled again, and got up to chase him off. The coon reluctantly ambled over to the steps and down. Leo, the big yellow tomcat, (that’s Leo Tolstoy) who had been sprawled out under the table got up when Brian yelled, and walked placidly down the steps with the coon.

The raccoon tried to come back again later, but was again chased off. But the next evening after dinner, when Brian was again sitting out on the deck with his book, he felt something brush up against his leg. Thinking it was probably Leo, his favorite cat, he reached down and was very surprised to find it was the RACCOON! The other cats were on the deck, not a bit bothered by the newcomer. We’ve decided Brian has picked up on the St. Francis of Assisi anointing—or perhaps Noah?

Brian came in to tell me, and I said if we were going to have another pet, he needed a name. I suggested Sparky. He objected, and said all our pets needed to have literary names. We have Leo and Fyo, named after the Russian giants, and then there’s Buechner, (pronounced Beekner, after Frederick). And so I amended my suggestion from Sparky to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But Brian preferred to name the raccoon Salmon Rushdie.

We were telling some friends the story the next day, and the day after that, got an e-mail from someone else who’d heard it. He was concerned the raccoon might be rabid, and suggested we shoot it. We don’t have a gun, but we haven’t seen that coon since. Salmon Rushdie has had death threats before, and once went into hiding for several years after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. We figured that coon didn’t want to take any chances.

A week went by, and then one evening while I was out watering some flowers, I found a huge snapping turtle in the yard. I went inside and got my husband, St. Francis, who said it couldn’t be a snapping turtle. He came out and looked at it, poked it with a stick, and it about snapped his hand off. He now agrees it is a snapping turtle. And while we were standing there looking at the turtle, I saw Salman the raccoon lope across the backyard!

Philip picked up the turtle and carried it down by the woods from where he’d probably come. He was just a few feet away from the road, and we really didn’t want him to get smashed by a car. He still had the stick Brian had poked him with clenched between his teeth, looking like a big stogey. All three cats joined us then, Leo, Fyo, and Buechner, who took turns sniffing him and jumping away when he jerked his head.

I assumed he’d be gone the next morning, but when I woke up and looked out my bedroom window, I saw three cats in a row, their heads poked through the rails in the deck, standing at attention, staring intently at something below. I couldn’t see anything, but a few minutes later, the turtle emerged from the irises. And Leo, the brave one, trotted down the stairs to investigate. When he was about twenty feet away, he began to creep up on the turtle, like a lion stalking his prey. But he stopped ten feet away, and then was afraid to come any closer. Fyo and Buechner were even less valiant than Leo, and stayed safely up on the deck, totally mesmerized by our new family member, the stone that moves.

I’ve named him Herman Melville.

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:17:32 GMT

On Tuesday our church staff put our regular tasks aside to go pick up trash. No, it wasn't glamorous. But I had been aghast at the huge amount of trash that had been thrown out of car windows defiling our fair city, and decided we could at least take care of the two roads leading to our church building. It was overcast and windy, which made our job a little less pleasant, but doing it together made it fun.

Walking about four miles of roadway, we filled approximately fifty large trash bags--that is, a full pickup bed and two trailers, which filled up an empty dumpster, and that’s not including the decomposing deer carcass. It was an unbelievable amount of trash.

Some observations we made:

1.Beer drinkers in our city are decidedly health conscious—almost all the bottles were lite beer, and Miller Lite seems to be on top.

2.The beer bottles outnumbered the soda cans 10-1. We decided this doesn’t mean ten times more beer than soda pop gets consumed in our city, but that beer drinkers are more likely to toss their trash out the window. We found a surprising amount of full, unopened bottles of beer—perhaps people are worried about getting caught with it in their cars?

3.Most of the paper trash is related to fast food.

4.There was very little other trash of any interest whatsoever.

5.All that bending, stretching, squatting, and hefting is far more exhausting than you would think.

I was excited to drive to work the next morning. I was anticipating seeing an amazing difference. It did look much cleaner. It looked different to me, since I had been so aware and disgusted by the mess. But driving down Cook Road, I admitted to myself that the absence of trash is not something people notice. What gets noticed is TRASH. I was also quite indignant to notice the Hardee’s sack and two drink cups that had shown up overnight.

TRASH. It’s the ugly part of life, but admittedly, there’s a lot of it. There was far more laying there by the side of the road than we would have guessed. And there’s not much glory in picking it up. But I’m glad we did, even though it will re-accumulate, and need to be done again.

I’m a Christian, a follower of Jesus. Last Friday’s message at church asked the revealing question, “Why Do You Want to be a Christian?” That’s a great question—how we answer that in our own mind will greatly affect the quality of our Christian life. I want to be a Christian because I want to participate in God’s plan to redeem creation, and creation includes me. I recognize the world is full of trash—I not only want to go pick it up on the streets, but I want to get it out of my life and help others to get it out of theirs. So what we did was a prophetic declaration of what we’ve committed our lives as a church staff to.

We could have looked at the trash, condemned it, said, “That’s not my trash.” That’s what good Pharisees would do. Jesus joined the human race and gave himself up to the purpose of redeeming creation. I deal every day with trash in the lives of people who are in the process of being salvaged. Picking up beer bottles and paper was a bit of a break, but a reminder that what we do everyday is eternally valuable.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING!

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:39:13 GMT

It's Easter--we're celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead! And rightly should we--in any way we can possibly celebrate! We had a feast--forget eating healthy, ignore the calories--that can all wait until tomorrow! We had ham, scalloped potatoes, and about six side dishes. Everything was awesome, including the homemade rolls--I ate two of them, slathered with butter. I knew there was a delicious lemon meringue pie waiting at the end of the meal, but that didn't slow me down. And I didn't just have one piece of pie, I had half of someone else's as well, with a cappucchino to finish it off.

After lunch, I had started cleaning up when it hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like passing out, and crawled off to the sofa, leaving the kitchen in a shambles. I grabbed a pillow and prayed for sleep to quickly overtake me as I felt lightheaded and miserable. My prayers were immediately answered, and I think I was out for about half an hour, as my blood sugar fought to recover from the assault it had encountered.

When I awoke, I laid there and wondered why I had eaten so much. Yes, it felt good while it was going in my mouth, but the lasting effects weren't so great. I felt like a slug most of the rest of the day. I recovered enough to play Scrabble with the family, but I continued to chastise myself for my frenzied, gluttonous fit. I had momentarily forgotten that I prefer to eat healthy not because I am self-righteous or think I'm better than others or that I'm obsessed with how I look in a bathing suit (oh, please!) but simply because I FEEL better when I make an effort to limit my intake of sugar and simple carbs and highly processed foods.

So tomorrow is Monday, the sun will rise in the morning and it will be a new day. And like every day, it's an opportunity for a new beginning. And I'll be hoping someone else will finish up that luscious pie--which tastes so good but leaves me feeling not so good in the end. I'll remind myself that it's worth it to deny immediate gratification and reap longer term benefits. I'll hopefully take a nice long walk or exercise in some way that will get my blood flowing, my metabolism stimulated, and my feel-good endorphins circulating!

Was it a sin? Oh, who knows! If it was, God forgives me. It's not a big deal. But there's something to consider here--I know the right way to eat, and I pay a price when I don't. A little bit of pie, once in a while, one roll--would have been perfectly fine. Pie and hot rolls fresh from the oven are good things--wonderful things! That is, when eaten in moderation, when a little self control is shown.

There are parallels that have much farther reaching effects. There are so many good things that God has created for us to enjoy, but when we use them in wrong ways, we can suffer incredibly. I'm thinking of someone I've been trying to help who is suffering deep emotional wounds because of a casual sexual encounter--wrongful use of something God created to be a blessing. It's not that God is angry and can't forgive her, but that this woman can't forgive herself. Why does God hate sin so much? Not because He is so personally offended, but because He knows the damage it causes.

God is not a harsh, moralistic goody-goody whose ears burn at the thought of sin, but a Father who loves us intensely and knows exactly what we need to be healthy in body, soul, and spirit. Not only will a diet that consists of soda pop and twinkies make us miserable, but so will a heart given over to unforgiveness or to anger or to pornography.

We're on a journey, learning lessons along the way. We are hopefully beginning to understand why God has told us to do certain things and not to do certain other things. It's not a random list of commands, but commands all designed for our ultimate good. If I want the best for me, I need to pay attention.

I'm going to bake another lemon meringue pie next Easter. But I'm going to remind myself that I'll feel better later if I simply enjoy a nice little piece--I don't want TOO MUCH of a good thing!

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:44:03 GMT

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Trouble as a door of hope. --Hosea 2:14

This is the prophetic promise that our church is entering into the new year believing, that 2008 will be a year of new beginnings, and that our Father has opened a door of hope in the place of our troubles. It speaks of being brought into the wilderness, and finding something unexpected but very precious there.

Philip asked me on the eve if I had any New Years resolutions, and I was surprised to realize that no, that perhaps for the first time, I don’t have any! I am as excited as I’ve ever been about the new year, and do believe with all my heart God has good things in store. 2007 has been a year in which I’ve observed many many people I dearly love dealing with great difficulties, certainly in places of trouble. It’s been a tough year, but not a bad one, because God has been in it.

I found myself thinking about another Scripture talking about the wilderness, and God seemed to speak strongly to me about it—Song of Solomon 8:5—“Who is this coming up out of the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?” The answer—“It’s me, oh, it’s me! I’m coming up out of the Valley of Trouble and I’m leaning on the one I love!”

Anybody who knows us knows how we love hiking in the mountains, going out into the wilderness. We venture out into the mountains with specific goals in mind, intending to conquer a peak, reach a specific destination, to return with great satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, enjoying being able to tell the story and perhaps brag a little.

I’ve read many reports, however, of those who ventured forth with those same goals, but instead became lost, encountered unexpected storms, and found their great adventure turned into a nightmare. They end up wandering for days, without food and shelter, until finally a rescue party is sent out to bring them home.

I’ve often imagined, reading those stories, the emotions that must flood those people when they are found and realize they’ve been saved. Great joy, exhilaration, relief, but then perhaps, as they are led back to civilization and encounter their friends and families and other searchers, a little bit of sheepish embarrassment as they have to admit they needed help, they made mistakes and used bad judgment.

I know God sometimes sends us into the wilderness so we can learn to lean on him, to trust him completely. And that is what I want to do more than anything, to lean on my beloved, the one I love, to trust him implicitly, to acknowledge that he is my great rescuer and that without him I am lost--I flounder and wander aimlessly. This year I want to come out of all my wildernesses “leaning on the everlasting arms”, and I won’t be embarrassed or ashamed. And may all those with whom I’m walking through this life do the same!

Paul knew about leaning on God, and the extraordinary lengths it sometimes takes to learn to lean on him, to trust him with everything. “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us.” (2 Corinthians 1:8-10)

Paul was in a wilderness, a place of great trouble, so great that he despaired even of life, yet the God who can cause all things to work together for good was teaching him a lesson that would bring the fruit of great peace to him throughout the remainder of his life.

And so perhaps that is my only resolution this year—to acknowledge that all my past resolutions have generally failed, and all I really need to do is totally lean on my Savior, to learn to cast all my cares upon him and no longer try to carry them myself, not to frantically try to find my way out of the forest, but to wait for my beloved to come and lead me through that doorway of hope into the bright sunlight of his plans and purposes for me.

LEO THE COOL CAT

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:26:25 GMT

A few blogs ago, I wrote about Leo almost getting in the hot tub with me. Leo is a boy, a tomcat, he’s big and he’s tough and fearless. He’s only six months old, but he’s huge, a big yellow cat. Tonight, New Year’s Eve, Pip and I cleared the snow and ice that accumulated today and got in the hot tub for a bit before going to our service at the church.

Once again, Leo hung around the edge acting like he wanted to get in, and we decided to help him over the little bit of fear that held him back. I reached out, grabbed him, and slowly submerged him in the warm water. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t hate it either. He didn’t struggle (much), and we let him swim a bit before I got out and took him in the house.

I toweled him off real good and let him down, and he walked a few steps away and then sat down. He was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. I would never have put Feo his sister in the hot tub. She is dainty and delicate, not much the outdoors type. But I was pretty sure Leo would enjoy himself.

Probably tomorrow he’ll be asking when we can do it again.

A SLED STORY

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 02:19:13 GMT

Summer, 1944. My dad, Ron, was 9 years old. Jack Howe, the neighbor boy who was fifteen and best friends with Ronnie's big brother, was moving away with his family across the state to Hannibal, Missouri. The truck was packed and there was no room for the big toboggan, and so he made a gift of it to his buddy's little brother.

I'm sure he never guessed how many years of fun our family would have with that sled. My dad kept it through his teen years, and we rode it countless winters through my childhood, and my children's. There was room for four or five people, and the more you put on, the faster it flew.

About six years ago, my son Aaron and his grandpa completely rebuilt the sled in oak, and it is beautiful. You would never guess that the sled has been around for seventy years. Today our family went sledding on the big hill at Grandpa's house, and I heard the story for the first time about how he first got the sled. I always knew the letters H O W E were painted in red on the bottom side of the sled, one letter on each slat. But until today, I never knew why.

I hope that sled is still in our family seventy years from now!

Aaron and Grandpa

Aaron, Grandpa, and Philip flying down the hill today!