Fierce Kiss Volleys

I felt a kiss from Dad, today. I know it was him because it scared the bejeebers out of me and it was cold persperation on my cheek. I think the hours of volley practice teaches you to catch more than just a volley. Your reflexes are ready to receive the volleys of kisses from "those whose rest is won".

Dad and Baby Ben in '89

Oh happy ones and holy, Lord, give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee!

Em not watching and Ez got lost!

We miss your pesky double checking where they are. We miss your constant yelling about where are they going and to whom will they be talking and how long will they be there, etc.
While I was driving around the neighborhood, I knew it was because my Emily wasn't at her post that this happened. 2 hours later we found him where he was all along. You would have known that already. It wouldn't have cost the years off our lives that we worried looking for him (Ez).
Thanks for all you do!

This morning Ezra and I took a trip back in time, as usual.

I look into his face and it takes me back to third grade and 5 younger siblings, at that age and how little of the concerns and cares look to be on his face. He wanted more sugar on his Cream of Wheat and that started my story telling of my sugar consumption. I "stole" all of the sugar cubes in the cabinet that were for the Rosarian luncheon. It was me. I had eaten them a little at a time, everytime, I hid in the cabinet to be alone or for "hide and go-seek". Little squares of sugar were the topic. I remembered out loud to him, as I sprinkled more sugar on his already sweetened breakfast. I remembered Grandma and Auntie, coming to our kitchen and letting me stir the gravy and offering tastes of this and that. "No, thank you!" No, Thank you, I was trained to say that and could say nothing else to them. I felt like Gram and Auntie were here with us as we reminisced. One day, Uncle Pat came with a brown paper bag and some egg custard for me. That started me eating some solid foods, more and trying things outside the box. I declare, Gram and Auntie must have prayed for a remedy to my hunger strike. The egg custard did it. That was the end of my eating the curtains and other pica problems and growing in health. Egg custard and prayer.

Myths of Marriage, at Christmas and New Years.

When you are single, you walk around singing and thinking about the holidays as this wonderfully romantic time. (I do remember before I was married, even though I was only 5 years old back then) Maybe you will meet him or her, this year. Maybe you are with him or her, this year. Some years all you need is mistletoe and some years all the mistletoe in the world is not enough. The same is true at seasons of your marriage, should God trust you with that field to sharecrop. Some seasons are easy to think romantical and some seasons take work to dig up some romance and thoughtfulness. When you mix children and finance problems and work stresses and home struggles and car breakdowns and health issues; what are you doing New Years? is a joke, sometimes. Where is it? Last year, or the year before the romance was on the front burner. This year, I went out into the yard and dug as deep as I could and there was not a drop of water in the romance well. That is where trust comes in. God is the river of romance. God is the filler of the well, not us. If you think that is boring, you don't know what is excitement.
I love the romantical seasons and the dry. I love the reality of waves of joy and tumult. I love the excitement of the marathon of marriage. I go to sleep and know that God is there, even when I am not sure if I am there. Earth to Jayne. God is still there, even when the romance is a fight to the finish. Maybe we need to hire a well digger, but either way, there is water down there somewhere and we'll find it.

Now, At 50, I labor to learn to...

Confess and forsake my sins.

Young people think that their elders have given off learning. I used to wish to be 50 years old and only teach and not learn. I find that I am learning more everyday. I am seeing more of myself and others and God that teach me. Young people are eager to direct the paths of their elders. They say, if you had only known about the green economy and the health initiatives that we have discovered you would not have gotten us in the mess that we are in. Perhaps, we elders say. The lessons of the years past is that covering our sins can only exacerbate the problem. When people were distant from their foibles and the seas could cover a boatload of sunken souls and no one would confess for fear, we were in sin and we didn't even uncover our shame. God knows that confession and forsaking the sin is always in order. We cannot build buildings big enough to house the blankets we try to cover them over with. Psalm 51 is the aid to the public soul and the private.
Lord, when we had covered our sins our bones grew broken and groaned. Take not Thy Holy Spirit from us. You said that if Your people would humble themselves...and pray...and turn from their wicked ways, You would heal our land. We need Your healing in our souls and in our government and certainly in our insurances. We would give You the secrets of our souls and ask for wisdom and righteousness to be learned of our younguns so that they can inherit a blessing out of decay.

This Thanksgiving, I had a meditation of baking pie with cousin.

We have never taken the luxury of setting time aside to bake, Lauren and I. But somehow, this Thanksgiving I had a fond remembrance of the many enjoyments of her delightful pie.
I suppose that my life, I have attempted to imitate the taste, if not the look of that divine confection, for my children's sake. So many times, at home, I have asked of this or that detail of her pie, while eating it. Is it nutmeg, and cinnamon? Is it a normal crust, or some secret? I couldn't get every taste coded into my buds before I moved so very far from the taste of home. "The Christie taste" Lauren has risen to the upper eshelon of Christie representation of pie. Perhaps because she made it every year, since we were very young, perhaps, because she is a grandchild and not a great-grandchild like myself. Whatever the reason, I accepted the challenge in my mind to take the time and try again for the ?llionth time to recreate that taste of home that I am so very sick for.
Wow, Laur...This year I got pretty close. It had the look. Not quite the combo of nutmeg and cinnamon and sugar that I would have liked and certainly, I forgot the lemon. Then, Laur would say to me, that is not lemon, that is some other secret ingredient. I nearly ate the whole thing myself and my hips will not be happy at the result. I do love my cousin and miss her pie as well as her hugs.

And the stars did a dance for free.

When the sun went down, the stars were peeping into the window in the house on the mountain. We have a show for you, they beckoned. I ignored them and told them that the fellowship was much to fun, for me to go outside and watch the Star's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I didn't know that we were going to a parade. When we decided to go home, when we had drunk as much of the fellowship as we could, within reason, we walked outside. We hardly had to look up and a star darted here and there, seemingly on cue. It was musical. It was syncapated and it was all the sky. Thank God, from Whom all blessings flow. Then we went home.

Blackbeans and rice for Thankful Monday!

A hazy fog was upon most of the area in eyeshot, this morning. Out of my back window, I saw the most beautiful sunrise. A sliver of sun shone through a peep hole that the clouds split for it. There was a pink and yellow and a tiny strip of red and then the brightness of the sun, in the middle. It was breathtaking. I thought of how much we have to be thankful for.

Many people enjoy the thankfulness of bounty all year round. This is America. We are so blessed that the poorest of us feast, far more frequently than we would like to admit. We are averse to the sin of discontentment that we live with. We complain about the weather and the food and the places we live in and only when our discontentment reaches the stench of making us look and feel bad do we confess it. God is so patient with us. We have so much to give God thanks for, in the best of times and in the worst of times.
Thank God for the blackbeans that will be our dinner tonight. Thank God for the preachers who study and give us direction from God for our lives. Thank God for the relationships of mother and husband and siblings and children and friends, who accent life with all their concerns. Thank God for caretakers, such as teachers and doctors and police, firefighters and governors, who concern themselves with protection and instruction and healing. Thank God for loves and neighbors who beautify the world around us and ask nothing in return but a greeting, every once in a while. Thank God for Blackbeans and rice. etc.

Y, La Sabiduria es una jueza, From 8/8/09

Is this the Happy Ending to West Side Story?

I want to live in America. Is this the happy part of Tony dying in the gang violence in the streets. Will his daughter do much to end the gang violence by her judgment of us? Is this the soap opera that the angels are watching as Tony and Maria watch their daughter taking an oath of commitment to judge imparially. Up from gang violence! Up from tenement life and overcrowded schools and jails and the violence that is so crippling to any pursuits. God has woven up together and the insertion process is sometimes violent. Some of us who travelled through the halls of Ellis Island were appalled at the shame of the gang violence in our streets and how many of our young men died young and lived far below their abilities.
Daddy used to say, we expect so much more from the women. We demand that they deliver us from this managerie. What did they feel that they were defending? What did they feel that they could or would gain from the violence? Respect? Approval? Purpose? Perhaps this is the birth of that respect. Perhaps this is the birth of the real dreams that Martin Luther King and Ceasar Chavez and even the fictional Tony dreamed for their daughters. Not subject to the wiles of the streets and the “Jungle” so to speak. God bless the coaches and the instructors who after having fought in the streets themselves could look into our eyes and see hope for a growth into a new and free America.
Those who contributed and built up the hope of a next generation and saw a possibility of representation for wealthy and the “disenfranchised” coming on board as well contributed to a worthy cause. It doesn’t matter which of us made it into the ranks. We all reached. It is better that one of us could be accepted into the ranks of the courts than that we still sit under the oblivion of not being represented. Halleluia! God has truly been good to the oppressed and they who have sat in the halls of prayer hoping to see a day of representation are looking and seeing one country that has a face of diversity in its highest courts. Tennis coaches, who looked at us and bid us to soar and rise. You can do it they looked at us and saw a hope for tomorrow. The Mr. Rooney’s and Mr. T’s and Brothers who were adept at creating opportunities for us where there was none, Halleluia to God for them. We could see strength and we could follow that light and head in the direction of wisdom and truth.
Take this ball and aim at that ceiling, they taught us and hit it as hard as you well please and one day it will come down. No? Jump like this and one day when you hit your head the ceiling will collapse and you will get into where you have never been before. Supreme Court? Well God is God, isn’t He? Halleluia!

Look Up From Your Life-me

In the interview of Charlie Rose with Andy Rooney in 1995, Charlie provoked Andy to describe the emotions that he experienced on D-Day in 1944. His description included the sight of horrific scenes that impressed on his conscious mind for as long as he lives the sight of young men’s feet sticking out from the blankets covering them. No life, just dead bodies laying there. His zealous confrontation of evil for the rest of his days, seemed to me, to be fueled by the positive use of the griefs that he sustained on those days. I was mesmerized to see the emotions that were evoked from simple questions and the respect of our elders bearing fruit, 50+ years after the day of such a grief.
I was blessed today to have heard a sermon or study that shed some light on this for me. The real human reflex that recoils from such pain and grief inflicted on the soul, was studied by Pastor Martin and stabbed my soul in a good way, to draw out, some small understanding of the reflexes of recoil that I endure and that I have seen in others with similar afflictions.
I have certainly not been to D day, but my own griefs of the sight of pain and grief cause my own natural recoil and grief responses in depth.
I felt that I understood the alcoholism of some of the soldiers that I knew in my life and the drug use of some others. These medications can dull some of the emotional pains and grief responses that cannot be forgotten.
He was right that there are those who use the scriptures to manipulate the consciences of the sensitive and promise relief from emotional afflictions that do not come, with mere salvation or sanctification of the soul. Some of the scars of grief, will be ours, until we get to glory.
There was, in the NT the healing of the demoniac, who might have been one, who was attempting to escape from a huge grief and couldn’t run from the horror of his own soul. His response was to desire to cling to the Savior of his body and soul. Jesus left him there as a testimony.
I don’t see a promise of panacea from the remembrance of griefs and the desire to escape from the horrors of mental and emotional pains, in the scriptures. I see many of the Lord’s choice servants live in great grief and difficulty throughout some or much of their lives. This seemed always an irony to me, in my pain and anxieties, that Christians are the first to judge the anxiety of others and the pain responses of humanity as being, automatically the sign of not having been redeemed.

In Proverbs 31, it was the godly mother of Lemuel, who discerned that there is a time of need of strong drink for those who are in suffering. Those who were privy to some of the wicked atrocities of war, are certainly among those who are in need of mercy in their dealings with their own griefs. I, personally, have found it difficult to find Christian sympathy in the expressions of griefs and grieving responses.

The discouragement that is exposed in the scripture as the lot of those who have been provoked, by parents is never delved into as much as the permissive lot of the spoiled child, though it is a warning. It may be mentioned, but rarely repented of and almost never dealt with in terms of healing and help for the discouraged soul. {this is just my experience}
Lemuel’s mother included this as a mention in Proverbs 31, that the wise and godly leader, must be aware of the speechless, grieving and “disenfranchised”. {God bless Sr. Anne and many of my Catholic friends and others, who could see the weight of the world on my shoulders and instead of dumping, chose to lighten and pray for the “disenfranchised” souls}
My purpose in writing is not to shine light on my own emotional disfunction, but on the generation, that I believe bore the heat of the day on the subject of emotional distresses; having lived under the shadow of the D-day generation and gave us real and hopeful evidences of the mercy of God, in the light of the conflicts of grief and pain in the emotional realm. It is my conviction, that the generation that came after the WWII generation ran as far from God as they could in the light of the atrocities that they had heard and seen in the faces of their parents. Guess who they found at the other side of sanity and questions about God and His goodness? They found God, right there and they found some of the solutions and they found some of the comforts are useful and God showed them that He has given us all things richly to enjoy.
The picture of James Taylor’s feet in that album make me think of the dry bones awakening from the deadness of the D-day and looking for the life that is ours. First, he dillineates the problem. On D day there looked to be no God. The Hippie Generation seemed to explore this possibility, into excesses and God was there to deliver some of them. Where shall I go from Your Spirit? was the question some asked. "Don’t ask that", says the McArthur generation. God can handle it, we know. Scripture asks that question. The boldness to ask the questions about God’s presence, assumes that there is possibly true faith, waiting for a response. God is there, to be found.

God is our very present help in trouble

and sometimes we need medicine to see Him there. He has shown Himself a mighty deliverer for many, who couldn't see His goodness in the shadows of D-day.Best Years of Our Lives, Homecoming scene