Taking stock

Today the world ponders the life and passing of Nelson Mandela.  And this holiday season as a whole can bend one toward reflection.  As well as burden.  In my life, it's been November where I've taken special notice since it holds for me powerful firsts and lasts, deaths and births, redemptions and travails.  Yet there's no wonder, with winter on its way (at least in our hemisphere), that anyone would take this time to take stock, store up.

I was remembering our car wreck of 1995 when I started this poem last month, already thinking on the mysteries of dying and living, when I learned of another unexpected death.  A dear soul left this world at the age of 38.  Just as his impact and that of Mandela do not end here, today, this poem could conceivably keep on going, no matter the number of Novembers I have to come. . .



Not very often now it'll flash in my brain I could have died that night but I was carried through
the force through dusk through the trauma through to dawn and I have not tried to count
the dawns I have been carried into since since I don't think it's a debt I could carry

Why am I given what others are not or do I not have what's theirs and is it better than life life
is so strange I said when she told me of some betrayal - or payback - maybe order made of
something and I beg again if I might see into what seems disorder but then catch myself

Are they really caught up into immunity, purity, ceasing of insanity insanity that's knowing
they are in fact more sane than this whole damned existence of dawns and dusks and force
is it that will carry them through trauma to something better than any could calculate

November you've had such darkness I have very often thought was dispelling through what's
been given me since that night but today you are carrying a richness of neither dark nor light
alone but of both and all all things made vivid, palpable, if only in flash, invigorated dusk

In my cup

In My Cup

Earl Grey and later ginger breakfast

but neither was first choice

I only think I have to drink my habit
because it's habit to think it

So I told myself: you'll have the tea

and poured it in a cup of no import

Except my breaking from a norm might be
important as making coffee essential to my morn

Then I let myself think on more
than drink: on death and life because of death

and when it will touch me closer with time
or even too close regardless of time 

How death does not come and go

it's all around and through and
how we might never choose to free
death if it was ours to choose

So I think to myself: I'll make the choosing
into habit when the cup is mine to fill
and I'll choose to drink what's in the cup
when the filling can't be mine

--------------------

I wrote this poem a week ago, when our local community had seen two tragic car accidents in a matter of days.  Dying was on my mind, as well as what we do with our freedom, even in the mundane.  My uncle had also been admitted to the hospital two days before and then lost his fight with cancer the following day.  Three others have died in accidents since.

Noah, me and 40

Reaching this age used to be embarrassing.  At least that's how adults seemed to celebrate turning forty.  I'd like to think I witnessed in them some kind of maturing into humility.  It felt more like fatalism.  Be sure, I've got the wrinkles and grays and "such" but those changes chisel away at pride in a different way.  They don't usually leave one grateful or in wonder.

One way I've celebrated reaching forty is recognizing it's come at this other juncture in my life - during a sabbatical and transition in work.  I get to enjoy all the changes, all together.  No sarcasm.  In this time of rest, I get to remember how truly abundant my life has been, and becoming forty becomes an honor.  I'm also left deeply grateful when I remember I cannot give this life nor take it away. . . .

Which brings me to Noah.  And wonder.  God decides he'll do away with an overwhelming majority of his own creation.  And Noah?  He gets to ride out the catastrophe in a boat.  Why? He walked with God. Go back about 500 years, when Noah is given his name, which means he will comfort.  Sure enough, he was found to be a comfort: to the grieving heart of God.

Can we imagine it? The One who can and did release all the waters of existence to destroy mankind: could he have found rest in one man? The waters recede, life starts new.  God finds pleasure in Noah once more and decides to make a covenant with all people, for all time, declaring:

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

 

It's as though God himself found a new reverence for life.

This poem could be about life, about the ark and flood, or any time, any man.  It's also about me and my forty.

forty days 

forty nights
forty years 

forty gifts

one today
for every day
forever rain pouring down

pouring out pouring in 

from the depths bursting forth opened gates 

flooding up to the heights lifted high

on we walk with our God

favor found above the ground

Firestarters

There's fire in us all.  How and when do we let it burn?

I began to write about my daughter's own in my last post. It's more often hers that stirs up the strongest response in me.  Perhaps it's the depth to which I relate to it, being myself a daughter, a sister... a female.

Naturally, we parents are quick to extinguish fires.  It feels safer.  We seem to have control by the looks of it, but our fear-filled force may very well leave a barren land after the flame's stamped out. Or it turns the fire into fury. Be it a slow, steady burn, one day it just blows and consumes anything in its path.  By forcing our way we only damage what God intended for beautiful purpose. 

I have a picture of backburning. It's a calculated method and likely implemented this week to help rescue Australia from dozens of bushfires burning there. Using any natural or man-made gaps in vegetation such as a river or road, fires ignited purposefully at such "firebreaks" will run back toward the wildfire and consume any potential fuel threatening to increase that fire's power. A positive force is applied.

What if we parents start little fires?  Clearly,  not the kind that would mean "exasperating" our children.  What about starting fires along the pure and good bounds of God's ways?  Our kids' passions that are specifically turning toward the dangerous might stay confined and find no more to consume. Instead, we direct their steps in order to usher in God's holy design for them by accompanying the work he's already begun. We're fanning the flames he ignited in the first.  As servants chosen for this purpose, we act in humility. And we must pray.

I have friends who began an online community centered around a short-term, concentrated prayer effort for their own kids.  It has stirred up my desire to pray more consistently to this end: to keep discovering and subsequently celebrating the passions in my kids in ways that won't bring hindrance but will fuel what our Father intended for Glory. And as I write, I am reminded that prayer brings the Fire that consumes the offering and fills the place with Glory! (See 2 Chronicles! I may have to pick that up in another post....)

I'll share a sort of backburning I've seen bring good things to my home. Kids desire boundaries. In fact, when they act out of control, it may be their way of crying out to understand the boundaries we've created or why we've neglected to set others. When my firstborn was an older infant, he'd fight diaper changes because it interrupted his play.  That was expected.  He'd get quite mad, though, and that seemed out of character to me.  He was so determined and strong that I'd physically struggle to hold him in place. The more force I used, mainly to avoid a nasty mess, the more power he seemed to gain. I guess it became a battle I was willing to fight, because it kept on until one day I smacked his thigh in the middle of an episode. Did he cry and submit and look longingly for an embrace of reassurance? Oh, no, he hit me back - with the fire burning hot.

That was that. It all came back to me - but not all at once - how gentleness covers mistakes and turns away wrath. A firebreak. I started to practice lowering my voice and upping the patience when my son raised his voice along with his temper. The response was amazing.  In the months to follow and years since, we've learned that our boy is full of his own fire - for what is just.  He's particularly sensitive to aggression, such as pushiness in people or unrest in his surroundings.  My choice to show him kindness in the midst of his own resistance toward me would snuff out the flames of hostility nine times out of ten.  It still does, and he's twelve.

Yesterday, I approached our daughter the same. Her older brothers and I have been lying around the house with the flu this week. Not a party, but she seems to think it so. She woke, insisting she wasn't going to school because she was too tired.  I'll use some force at times to get her going, usually coupled with silliness that eventually turns her mood around.  I didn't have strength for that yesterday, so I picked her up and held her in my lap.  I simply acknowledged her cry.  After five minutes of cuddles, she was chatting and pleased to get on with her day, that wildfire of innocent delight flickering inside and out!