asheville trip

 

Reminiscing trip to the Arboretum and Aunt Jackies house

 

art show in Raleigh. hoorah for Emily

emilys art piece at a show

 

Hands In! Hands Down!

 Facts and Facets

Heirs together of the grace of life?  God’s Word

If heirs together what are the facets that create the dynamic of inheritance.   My gift from Ben on 40 years together was a faceted mirror with goodies loaded atop them that were historically significant.  My own engagement ring got lost at Remington Street the day that I took it off to wash his mother’s hair.  I don’t remember the exact number of corners of the top of my own diamond, but I often see the tops of the buildings in Charlotte and imagine a group of women volleyball players putting their hands in the huddle and the diamonds represent the determination to defeat the world, the flesh and the devil in the eternal match!  The Eternal Match!

Mother’s in the Spiritual Israel have a calling to represent Christ to their children and focus on preserving the knowledge of God against all enemies, domestic and abroad who would seek to silence and nullify the influence of the Church in the generation they are called to protect.  Daniel wasn’t a woman, but he is the example of this because his call to preserve through an onslaught of godlessness is parallel to our own generation.  The exaltation of polytheism and the exaltation of idolization of humanism and humanity are some other enemies.  Committed relationships and women who support them are part of the eternal facets which are recognized in Scripture.   Diamonds themselves are not represented in scripture as such, but that is the symbol that has been passed down to our recognition.  Self actualization and individual rights stand as goliath against the knowledge of God passed down from generation to generation and they mimic the voice of the church, oftentimes stealing the language of redemption to validate their lies.  I will, I will says the devil.  His self actualization is our model to follow.  Eve followed ignorantly.  She thought God had some secret he was saving for those who found their own way.  All we like sheep follow her in disobedience and then God saves us.  Emulators of family project their wills and super impose their images for God upon the family.  They cannot stand. Government attempts to superimpose it’s image upon the family creating a democratic or monopoly of individual autocrats in place of parts of the body.  The image that God has given us has a head and parts that function interdependently.  The image that the devil has given us eats and drinks of itself and is self absorbed and self actualized and actualizing.  I will survive! Says the devil to God.  I will fight.  I will keep fighting against you and the family until “SHE is “saved through the child bearing” and until They inherit the grace of “LIFE”.  As long as they can be distracted from that,  I am good with that says he.

What's Love got to do with it?

 Moab is my washpot!  

What do we wash in Moab?

Where did we come from?

Where is our great awakening?

What do we represent and how do we reflect the image of God in our blackness and in our Moabidity?

I have laid before the Lord for so many years.  Searching history for some dynamic moment to have been documented where repentance and faith and great changes of life and situation were memoired for me to place in front of my children to give great credence to the work of Scripture in our heritage.  I wept before God. I own my Christian heritage and anyone and anywhere those whose testimonies were to the glory of God were my food for setting before my children as their spiritual ancestries.  They accepted it and made few complaints for the most part.  

I wasn’t content with reading about white tears from the coal miners and South American revivals, while knowing that there were many many atrocities at the same time that were going on in my own people group.  Spiritual awakenings, I had seen personally and been privy to some in my own present day.  That wasn’t contenting me.  I needed a historic documentation.  I lament the African participation in the slaying of the innocents in Moses day.  It made me historically sad.  Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar, not to mention many other Darkly colored villains of Scripture scared me about my own cultural proclivities.  What are the purveyors of the histories that I have learned and purported trying to make me feel about myself and my identity.  I am black.  I am not as privileged.  I mustn't be trusted with authority lest I get puffed up like my ancient counterparts, etc.,etc.

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.  God loves your blackness and has always had a wonderful plan for your beauty and humanity.,etc.,etc.

I am not sure that I have accurately expressed that to my children.  Your body type and your color and your humanity is not less than or an afterthought of our Lord.  He planned that through Christ all of the atrocities that have gotten us to this place in history will be dealt with in His mighty equality.  She shall be saved through the childbearing, whatever that means.  If they continue…?

Instead of lamenting your womanhood and your blackness as not being recognized by your surrounding culture, celebrate the image of God that is recognized in scripture and see what God says that He will do to the valley.  Lift it up.  What he will do to the invisible.  Shine a light on it.  I have water on Moab right now and I have my shoe over a group of people that seem invisible or vulnerable in the history of the world as a whole.  This sickness is not because they are more wicked than any other but that the works of God might be manifest through Him and that His glory might  be seen in the foolish things of this world bringing to naught the things that are exalted.  

That NO FLESH might glory!

To God be the glory!  Our beauty is not something to flaunt, but a gift to be cherished.  Our expression is not to compete with the Lord, but to Thank God for!   

Some of us are not as gifted as Tina Turner was, but she gave us a goal in our marital love to win over our husbands.  That is a type of cleansing that only the Moabites and those who imitate them can know.

Coveting true health for my soul!

Learning to refresh and recreate yourself, on vacation.  Women’s rights and women’s health and women’s issues must include mental health breaks and emotional support of one another.  The emotional support to give eachother a nudge and comfortable affirmation that personal breaks are in order, from time to time.  Often it is too late, by the time we realize that we need a break.  Like minded women and service oriented women must give eachother space to recreate.

Teaching women to love their husbands and love their children has been my theme for these 40 years of marriage, sometimes to the loss of my health and sanity.  Teaching women to use some of their time to learn to thrive in the unswerving environment of constant contact with work and world is a somewhat more difficult task for me.  Always connected to the phone and internet can become like a 24 hour nursing schedule which only a mother of a newborn usually has to endure.  Always on call for this or that item.  If you are not careful your care of self can go on the back burner if not in the trash.

I was reaffirmed by some photos of women reading and lounging in Nantucket.  This is a place I have never been to, but it doesn’t have to be Nantucket to be a place for refreshing.  Put away the cell phone and the news and the internet.  Maybe not the computer, so that you can write what you learn from God on your journey to the inner sanctum of your soul.  Where is my soul?  Where is my heart?  Where are my affections fixed?

We think because we make it to church on Sunday and pray and read that means all is well.  It may well mean that, but it may mean that you are a good faker and more attached to the schedule of the usual than the true refreshing of attachment to God.  Lord, forgive me for placing my reputation for godliness above the true relationship with you.

Seen praying?  Seen Praising?  Are you? Am I like the ones who delight in the being seen as a worshiper when my heart is all out of sorts.  I must dig into the recesses of my soul and find out.  I must get alone with God to know if that is the case?  Healing is in your Wings, dear Lord, but if my eyes are on my bellybutton and on my aches and pains of heart and body, I am not reaching for the hem of your garment in your presence.  How many women were well in body and didn’t reach out for Jesus?  The need created the impulse to press into Jesus.  I must be aware of my need to touch his hem for healing.  

Heal me, Oh Lord!  It’s me, It’s me, standing in the need of prayer. And refreshing and healing and heath!

New York times article

Christmas In Connecticut

 Here I sit in my sunny living room on a Sunday afternoon meditating on the generosity of God to a sinner such as I.  That is not hyperbole.  

It sounds surreal that God would allow us so much of His mercy and grace.  It is not like Christmas in Connecticut a fake story. It is reality!

I haven't grown any citrus trees, like Martha Stewart.  My praise and worship has grown and withered and grown and I am grateful for the seasoned expectation that I have of the presence of God, here in my early 60's.  

We are here in Huntersville, North Carolina and the cultural presence of God has been startlingly awestriking to me for these years of living here.  Common Grace and fear of God seen in the regular living of life.  Not an armored defensive faith but a settled expectation of God's pruning and fertilizing.  I have learned much.

putting on the whole armor of God is against our personal propensities to sin, not against our neighbors.

"Jesus ready stands to save you, full of mercy and love and power"

The beauty of the Church doing it's work in the community is beautiful.  We should expect it. In our souls and in our communities we should expect to see the growth and blessings of the church in action.

My father used to say that in an unbelieving way.  "If the church is so powerful, why are the drug dealers all up and down that neighborhood?"  I never knew how to answer him.  I never knew how to defend my church that I loved and sang so triumphantly about.

The Church's one foundation?

I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord?

What Sacred Fountain Yonder Springs?

We Never Need be Vanquished?

He stood as a constant reminder that we were inept in our duty to our community there.  Sin was rampant, but I never thought to say to him that could he imagine how bad it might be if that church weren't on every corner?

Not until He was gone could I see that.  One of the deacons gave his testimony, who was my father's age and told how he ran in the streets and sold drugs and might have been killed and a praying woman who became his wife helped deliver him from himself.  I hadn't imagined deacon So and so as being my Dad's age and having run with him.

It was latently consoling.  Too late to share with my one missionfield, but not too late to comfort my heart.  He was gone and God is sovereign I couldn't imagine any other way than the way it had gone.

Now there are many great and shining lights of churches in New York and they have done many wondrous things throughout my city and I am grateful to have seen neighborhoods and communities transformed and lives renewed, but saddened that my dad wasn't there to see his pittance of a tithe that he put in the offering plate grow to a great and beautiful cathedral.

Jesus, the powerful name is enough, but with what measure we engage ourselves to aspire and exalt ourselves on resumes and in articles about us.  We find superlative words to exalt ourselves and yet we only refer to He who built the lofty skies as YOU.  I am inept!

Where's my helmet?

  Put on the whole armor of God!

How many days do we go out into the battlefield of the Lord with pieces of our armor on and pieces of our armor left at home?

I know that I hate it when I get caught with my pain medication in my pocketbook.  I step on my arthritic knee and it says, "nope". I am not going another step.   I often imagine myself strewn on the floor of the Commons.  Why didn't I anticipate my recurring pain?  Worse yet, is getting hit by the fiery darts of the enemy of our souls.   He targets you with your own knowledge of scripture.  He knows you left your helmet of salvation home today and it will do its most significant damage to your soul, if not catapult you right down to the deepest hell.

Jesus has given you instructions and you ignored them.  Put your coat on!  It is snowing!  Put your earmuffs on you will catch cold and there you are on your deathbed lamenting your own ignorant sad negligence concerning your health.  More sad the condition of the soul in hell who has had a closet full of God's Complete Armor and left it home in the heat of battle.

Eternal, is the sense of lamenting.

I think about it daily concerning myself!

Lest I be a castaway

For the love of Catechism...Only God knows who is in the Book of life...but God has means to get your name in there.

 " What is the chief end of man?"

"What is He ain't that he won't already is?"

The mystery of the trinitarian perception of God and how can it be encompassed in our finite language is amazing to me.  We are climbing Jacobs ladder and every round goes higher and higher.  Every generation grows upon the findings and excavations of the earlier generations.  It is always amazing to me that the more progressive we become, the lesser the spiritual hunger seems to be expressed. 

I catechised my children and this seems to have given them a sieve of faith in God's word that is sometimes baffling to me.  The catechism's that we employed included orthodox expressions of understanding God's Word boiled down to simple truths.  It is a way to look at your life in a prism of faith that can't be stolen from you.  When some "so-called" truth tries to parade itself into your soul, your youthful teachings guard your soul {to some extent}.

Why did God make us?  Isn't God good?  Amen and Amen!  He wants us to love Him and enjoy Him forever!  There is no real truth that flies in the face of God's truth.  You needn't be afraid of studying.  All truth belongs to God.  

Learning about God is the mine of life!  We could look at Him from every angle and never find an imperfection.  The translation of our Ebonic traditions have so much to instruct us about the infinity of God and His TriUnity.  How our forefather's embraced a language and lived in subservience and developed a way to talk to one another, uninterpretable by the Master and yet our own English I find phenomenal.  God has an eternal purpose in our slave history and our growth out of that position.  

God is high and exalted and yet condescends to the lowest estate.

The African History of being the most magnificent empire and the most diminished empire and yet used by God in our exaltation and in our debasement.  That is God's way of expressing His image in our history and it is to our benefit to rejoice in the glory of what God has done instead of complaining about the providences and the steepness of the climb and the swiftness of the slide.  We must trust His purposes in the personal and in the corporate cultural and the corporate national and the corporate church and the corporate age that we live in.   Where we are in time is where we are. 

Keep reading the book of revelation and pray for God's true purpose for the time God has appointed you for.  He will use you for His glory wherever you are.

Did Daniel perceive that his story would endure the times of history?   He was a very young man determined to live for God in a wicked world.   We live in a time that is infected with the Gospel along all lines and cultures but equally infected with deceptions.  Vigilance and study of God's word is the new Kosher.  Will you eat the king's philosophies?  Will you truly imbibe the deceptions as true? Daniel purposed in his heart.  

Will I guard my heart as diligently as I guard my tummy?  To us belongs confusion of face, but righteousness belongs to YOU!  I am confused.  I don't get it.  Only You own the righteousness.  I see Daniel looking around at the things that all the nations regard and seeing how off center it was compared to God's standard.   We have sinned and that is why we are here, but they are also confused who are our captors.  We are not here to emulate their standards but to represent God in the confusion that is around us.  Yes, we mess up, but there is forgiveness and straightening power in the God of the universe.  He doesn't just leave us to ourselves.  They have no standard.  They have accountability to lesser standards.  The kingdoms of the world will one day bow to Christ, but until that day...We pray for God's standard in our own lives because that is the only safety.

Your testimony is God's resume for you and for your children.  God has been faithful in pain and in joys.  Some answers to prayer we have seen and some things we await.  But HE IS!

Dear Emmy, I love our conversations. this is a thought about family conferences that we were talking about.

 The treasure of Family conferences.

perhaps because you were young and small,  you don’t remember the delight of going to family conferences with fondness.

I would like to give you my perspective about the gathering of God’s people in a concentrated way and the love of the presence of God that is manifested to his gathered people who have longed and waited and prayed for his presence among them for a more prolonged season in a vacation setting.

I.  refreshing

II. hidden treasures

III. counsel and direction

IV. confirming in faith

V.  comfort for the afflicted

VI. fellowship in rejoicing

VII. a Great way to find a companion of like faith

VIII. A Help to growth and usefulness in God’s kingdom, (perhaps networking in millenialese)

XIX

Dear Emily, Why do I start salivating when we sing Row, Row Your Boat?

 row  row row your boat?

gently down the stream

merrily, merrily, merrily...

Life is a butter dream!?

The raging hunger for butter is everywhere, when you are in withdrawal from the delicious fatness! Like a bear, I go to bed and hope that my hibernation will scale down the raging bully of my appetites.  

Even the baby songs seem to advertise into my heart to reach for the icky sticky stuff that is the object of my awesome desires.  They rule over me and I press them down a bit, reaching for my Crystal Light flavored Chobani{my new fat free ice cream substitute} to satiate my obsessive passions.  They work for a minute or two and I give in to a piece of bread and a pat of butter to relieve my pain.  

I slept off my shakes and the headache, but my conscious state is preoccupied with the constant rushing pain of trying to lessen my butter intake.  The air fryer is helping with some of the other oils, but nothing replaces my pat of butter on my bread or my buttered waffle for a comfort in a pinch.

What are you comforting yourself for this week?  I broke a fingernail.  I stubbed my toe.  I need some bread and butter!  It is only fair.  It has become like sucking my thumb. It needs to be subdued and I will continue to pray and confess my sins and keep striving toward my deliverance from this affliction and present addiction!

My Joy!

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/20-proverbs/text/books/bridges-proverbscommentary/bridges-proverbs.htm

If truth is marching...

Where are the Grapes of wrath stored?

Curses undone by the grace of God...

On pacifiers and the pancreas?

Could it be that too much sucking on the pacifier is actually dangerous?  Swallowing saliva all day might have some ramifications, I only imagine.   Gum chewing and pacifier sucking are quite similar in their effects I think.  We don't get to the root of the problem of anxiety in the child's experience.  Lots of saliva and lots of anxiety are the fruit of childcare hopping.  We are focusing on the need for childcare and the need of parents to work outside the home and not on the emotional and physical wellbeing of the child.  Who's health is being impacted.  Is childhood diabetes and other pancreatic disfunction related to this change in our culture.  It is amazing that we know who and how many individuals have had complications of he COVID and for years we haven't even seen the relationship between cultural changes namely mothers in the workforce so early and deaths from cancer and increases in diabetes and other ailments.  We must investigate the correlations and see if we can't rectify this and turn that curve around as well. 

What is Gone?

Who cares what was Gone with the Wind?

Beauty, gone.

Culture, gone,

Safety, gone.,

Men, gone.

Decorum, gone.

Etc.

To be replaced with what!

Ungenteel evolutionism.

“We built this culture!”  Anglo, Euro, American, polite society! They seem to scream incessantly.  I don’t blame their sad and sullen embrace of the prereconstructionist south.  It was beautiful.  Hauntingly beautiful so that long after it was plowed to the ground the characters who beautified the landscape told their stories to the mourning of a pre war country.  

I was never southern and I have never had much respect for the supposed culture that was being mourned in my ears through my civil rights era minds eye.

It was better then, they sang more and more loudly. Why can’t people see that.  It was better for some and it was worse for some.

I was a student of Steinbeck and I see now that his stoic realism was more in line with the America that I experienced and saw the fruit of and heard the stories about.  Raw and city.  The southern decorum was a myth hat I had never even heard the stories about.  I do believe the stories of a culture that had risen to such expressions of beauty and lucidity .  I believe that the teenagers had time to beautify themselves and learn piety and poise.  Other people were enslaved to allow them this privilege.  That is true and when God snatched it out of their paws they couldn’t believe that it was as though it had been a dream.  The depression came trampling upon this country with a vengeance.  The culture was razed to the dust.

Chapter one of the book makes me jealous and angry, but I press on.  I have no right to be jealous of a girl of privilege or a culture not my own.  None of us deserve the privileges to which we were born.  I do not appreciate the inheritance of culture that I was bequeathed.  It was a beauty of storytelling that is hauntingly beautiful and it belongs to all of us.  

I couldn’t believe that until Hamilton.  All of our hands were at the plow to create the memories that were woven into our American History.  We can all play the parts because we inherited the catastroph of the tower of Babyl that fell on that fateful day.  

“Frankly Scarlet…”. Who cares?  We all care. But we all don’t know from whence we have fallen.  The biblical knowledge that grew the decorum that was the precision war southeast a divine gift or a loan and what we do with it is everybody’s responsibility, much like our economy or the engineering of the wondrous subway system that makes me smile. The decorum and culture of southern life is a Biblical gift. It is tended by the garden of a couple of generations of people who were enlightened by the golden rule and other dear portions of scripture that are blinded in other areas of the country.  Like a beautiful flower garden with secrets that observation cannot teach you, that is the southern cultural beauty.  We must let the south teach the rest of the country the things that God has taught them.  Do not despise the day of small things and the details of humble submission and respect for providence.  I am very aware of the pride of the south as I am of my own northern pride, but I am choosing to focus on the image of God that I see in stark contrast to my own northern krassness.  Help Lord as I delve into this book to put my emotions aside and learn of You what was “Gone with the Wind”. Amen.

Feeding my Frenzy!

A Fool and His money is soon parted, my father would say to me.  Except, this morning it wasn't money it was 2 eggs in a carton of 18 with a dozen in the other carton that was burning a hole in my pocket.  I must do something.  I wanted the muffins that Enoch brought in that were nicely wrapped and in a big box, but I haven't got them anymore.  They were eaten and to pay me back for having eaten his muffins, he ate my wonderful bran and pumpkin seed cereal, which was a gift for teacher appreciation week.  I have 1/2 a bag of pumpkin seed cereal and two eggs and some clabba milk and what else.  about 2 cups of flour in a bag with a whole untouched bag of flour to boot.

I must tell you it was an AHAA moment!  I pulled out my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.  This was not a task for Rhee Drummond, this was a day of improvisation with bits of this and bits of that in it.  Muffins?  What kind of muffins?  I haven't a whole cup of anything in particular.  If they don't eat them, I will wrap them in a box and eat one at a time, as though En had bought them from the store.  Anyway, they always tear into the whole batch before I can get a taste.

I found a recipe for Bran Cereal Muffins.  I was certain that I had about a third of a bag of Allbran left from my banana bread recipe, two weeks ago.  So I began my morning search for the ingredients.

1 cup of boiling water was the easiest to find, because I always boil water when I am washing the dishes
3 cups of whole bran cereal(not flakes)
I was sure that I had that, but En had eaten the bag down to one cup.  Uhoh!
I have already begun the process and there isn't any Allbran, and there isn't but 1 cup of that designer bran cereal that I got from teacher appreciation week.
I put the Wheat germ and the bran cereal together with the boiling water and hoped for the best!

I nearly cussed when I had to search high and low for the cinnamon in the cabinet.  I said, Emily would never have let the cabinets get this discombobulated.  Thank you for all you do!

Well, anyway, the whole house is smelling of a delicious sort of unusual combination!  I know you don't eat eggs or dairy, but you would be proud of me clearing the fridge of half of the items that we use, to make what is hopefully my greatest muffin creation.  I threw in the chocolate half of the smores that were in the freezer,  just in case the last of the sugar wasn't enough to sweeten the brew.


MMMM it smells good and it looks okay, we will see, what becomes of us, when we devour them...

Perry Como's And I Love You, "SO"

And I Love you “So”

{this happened years ago}

So,  became my name, because of the uncaring attitude that became mine in the light of great responsibility.

Ie.

You didnt get that done?

My answer, SO!

SOmeone was offended by you doing this or that?

My answer, SO!

I didn’t know Granddaddy was so aware of how hard it was to carry the weight of being the eldest child until he died.  I nearly died with him.  That would have been appropriate, I think.  Seeing that he was the one person who I hated, who I never told that I hated him.

He answered my every scream in that song.  I heard it in Harris Teeter and I could see him right in front of me all the way through the store.  I wanted to push him aside and tell him, you know that I hate you, but the tears were flowing so much that I just had to keep walking.

I know you hate me, but this one is for you!

Every word sunk deep into my pained and broken soul.  Why didn’t you take your responsibility?  Why would you throw that stuff on us?  I couldn’t even ask him that in the context.  

I couldn’t tell you then and you couldn’t tell me, then, but we do love each other, don’t we.  And we died together.  And you will be able to get up from this, won’t you!  Okay I love you!

And I love you SO, though people ask me how,(How could I love you when you run around hating on people like you do)  You fight like a barnyard dog and you cuss like a sailor.  Can’t you do anything about her?

How have I lived in her good graces and not received a lashing like everybody else?

How come she doesn’t sass you, like she does everybody else?

I tell them, I don’t know!

I am explaining to you how much I understand the wrath of your life.

“So” You were a barnyard fighter who grew into a judgmental little “so and so”.  I really don’t know which I like worse the sinner or the saint “So”.  I know that our relationship is now and then. I looked all over heaven and I didn’t find one prayer for me.  I knew you never preached to me, like you did to everyone else.  But, I didn’t think that you never even prayed for me.  Thank God, somebody did.  You never forgave me and you never talked about your anger to me, but you know what.  I love you “So”!

Thank God there is forgiveness with God! 

The Beauty of Words?

The Beauty of using a multitude of words

One of the beautiful things that I am learning from growing into a Charlotine is the beauty of using words to express things in verbosity.  It is a southern thing.

A New Yorker uses gestures and a word.  Perhaps a glance and a shove, might work if the gesture didn't but the multitude of words that these people use are delightful to watch.  Tones of voice and imploring sentences repeated, just for effect has been a conundrum to me.  WHY?  Why do they talk so much?  Why do they repeat the same sentence, inside the same sentence and I have to unpack the meaning of a repetition before the verb and a repetition after the verb, means several different things.

I have never been verbose or loquacious, but I admire from a great distance the power of imploring and implications that don’t really mean what you meant.  Letting people stew in their own misunderstanding of a thing that you took so very long to say.  It is an art that I do often wish were a part of my upbringing.

Many days, I miss the power of pounding the money on the counter at the post office and not having to say anything but 10 or 12 meaning stamps and getting just what you want.  I love that woman, for knowing what I meant, without getting offended.

The art of underlining your phrases and underscoring your inferences is beautiful, when you look at it from a distance.  I love thinking about it and I love hearing the sentences from the southern verbiage and processing them from my northern ear.  I think of it as a transplanting dilemma.