I can write about small things like the death of a cat but it is really hard to write about big things like the death of a brother. I am used to tackling subjects head-on and burrowing to the truth of them but I can’t do that with this landmark event. I can only write around the edges of it. The first death among my siblings. Continue reading
family
Celebrating compromise
The snow has been here for so long that I feel like we need more vocabulary for it, like the people of the north do. Light and fluffy, heavy and wet, settled snow, crusted snow, plowed snow, dirty snow, melting snow. Patterns of snow melt. Do you notice that it melts first around the bases of trees? A pocket for each tree, perforating the puffy snow duvet like knots in a comforter. It must be because the dark color of the trees absorbs what little sunlight there is, heating a bit, prompting the first melt.
Sunlight. The days are longer and the temperatures bump up now and then, but not enough to bring spring. One longs for real sun, real warmth. I just dawdled away an entire week planning a vacation in the tropics. It helped me get through the latest blizzard. Continue reading
Dead cats
A dream this morning between 6 and 7. Vic and I are at home but it is my childhood home. We are looking after some children. Toys are scattered everywhere. I am sitting at a table reading. Suddenly I feel Lalo on my lap, real as life although I know he is dead. I pet him and he stretches in pleasure, turning almost upside down, sliding down between my legs. Continue reading
My solar guy
Sometimes the best thing about church is community, a pool of friends and acquaintances who share the burdens, joys, and responsibilities of life and who unite often in common cause. Building that kind of community, however, requires work. You can’t pay pastors and leaders to do it all because then it’s not community; it’s spectator church. Because that kind of church does not feed our souls, Vic and I find ourselves taking on assignments and responsibilities in whatever church we attend. Continue reading
Snafus
It was not a good morning. First there were the reminders of my late beloved kitty-cat, put to sleep yesterday after 19 years with us. As my daughter said, that’s as long as raising a child and, indeed, I was experiencing empty-nest syndrome as well as grief this morning. Little stutter-clutches at my chest as I poured milk in my tea and didn’t pour any for Lalo, started the vacuum cleaner and momentarily worried about scaring him, hesitated before I set my laptop down on his favorite chair by the woodstove. Continue reading
Lalo
Our cat is 19 and a half years old. I think he is nearing the end of his life.
The vet told us six months ago that his kidneys were failing, which typically happens with old cats. But he has seemed fine, just slowing down, sleeping most of the time. Yesterday, however, he started limping and stumbled down the steps when he went to the basement where we keep his food, water, and litter box. We immediately brought all that upstairs. But in the last 24 hours he has grown even weaker and can hardly stand up. It’s the weekend. We have an appointment with the vet Monday morning. We’ll see. Meanwhile, he continues to appreciate attention and petting. Vic and I are trading off on that because if both of us move away, he, too, tries to move. Right now he is curled against my leg, sleeping. If my presence is a comfort to him, this is where I will stay today. Continue reading
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Twas the night before Christmas and there was no tree.
The son and daughter-in-law’s plan was to get the tree on the weekend before Christmas, a day or so before we arrived from 800 miles away, but that was the weekend of the ice storm and so the outing to get a tree didn’t happen. Continue reading
Pass the compassion and forgiveness
I am hosting a crowd for a funeral in my large mansion somewhere in the deep South. I am bustling about getting everything ready, including an elaborate meal. I have chosen a white eyelet dress to wear but during the preparations I wear a white blouse and brightly colored skirt. The guests have not yet arrived but it is clear that they will of different cultures and races. It is also clear that my butler, George, does not approve of this cultural diversity. I am afraid that his resentment might sabotage the whole event. I am the boss, after all. I try to be firm with George. And then I change into the white eyelet dress. End of dream.
I’ve been doing a lot of crosscultural hosting recently, and I can understand how Butler George represents a part of me, as does the hostess. Butler George is the one who preserves traditions (e.g. Thanksgiving), who assures that everything runs well and that proper form is followed. Butler George was resenting the Chinese grandfather who was popping pistachios into my granddaughter’s mouth just before we sat down to eat. And Butler George was indignant that, in the middle of family time and Thanksgiving preparations, messages were coming from Congo hinting that more money was needed for certain things. Meanwhile, the Hostess (in her prep-time multicultural outfit) was noticing how husband and son-in-law would sporadically ask what they could do to help get meals on but then revert to their computers with the assigned tasks half finished. Continue reading
Maternity hospital
This morning we visited the hospital where our daughter was born almost 41 years ago.
I don’t feel any attachment to the hospital where our son was born two and a half years later. I suppose I could visit Kaiser’s big hospital in Cleveland any time I want. Maybe that’s why it’s not special. On the other hand, I never really expected to get back to our daughter’s birthplace.
But there is more. The “accouchement”, the birth process, here at what used to be called St. Elizabeth in Lubumbashi, DR Congo, was more personal and humane than the factory rush-through of standard American maternity care. It was more like giving birth at home. Your family was expected to do the newborn’s laundry, for instance, and your stay was as long as it needed to be. In my case that was eight days, which took us to the date my mother and father came from the US to visit and help out.
It was a pleasant eight days in a spacious, high-ceilinged room with lots of windows and my tiny daughter beside me in a crib. She was only 4 pounds 10 ounces but a midwife pronounced her healthy and said no incubator for her. Indeed, she thrived and quickly gained weight.
The hospital was run by Belgian nuns and a few Belgian doctors, which is why it was known as “the hospital of the whites.” Most of the patients were Congolese. Most white women in Lubumbashi went to the better equipped clinic run by the copper mining conglomerate Gecamines. I thought St. Elizabeth’s was good enough for me and it was.
We couldn’t find the hospital on the map we picked up of Lubumbashi on Tuesday, our first day here. We found out it was now called University Clinic but still remembered as the hospital of the whites. Today the maternity director said she saw its real name only recently on a document.
And then she pulled out old record books, some marked “Congo Belge” and others marked with the year. 1974. 1973. And 1971-72. She opened this one and ran her finger down the lists until she came to 1/11/1972 and there we were. Born at 6 a.m. to Mme. Myers Eash Nancy of UNAZA (Université Nationale du Zaire) a female, 2.1 kilos, first baby, mother aged 29 (actually not quite), vaginal birth with episiotomy. The doctor is listed as Dr. Houtaine, but it was actually a midwife who delivered her because the doctor didn’t get there in time.
And then the director took us to the room where I had spent those first 8 days with my daughter. Another mama was there with her tiny infant. The light streamed in through the tall windows. I got all teary.
Reflections on the eve of travel
My husband and I leave tomorrow for nearly 4 weeks in DR Congo. We will celebrate the ordination of the first women in the Mennonite Church of Congo, listen to choirs, build church partnerships, revisit old haunts. I will write, Vic will do audio and video. I have written a number of posts about this (see the Congo menu) but this one sums it up.
I started thinking last night before I went to sleep about how much preparation I have done for this trip. I cut off those thoughts immediately because, although they were good thoughts, I knew they could keep me awake for hours. I will give them free rein now since I am all packed (though Vic isn’t) and all I have left to do is clean the house and finish up the instructions for Patti, our house/cat sitter.
I thought how the first recent trip I made to Congo, last May, had been full of revelations. The possibility of genuine friendship with Congolese. The mad joy of worship that went straight to my heart and gut. African resilience and warmth. The money bugaboos. Mistakes that could be made and redeemed. The possibility of church partnership–this, above all. It was a revelation to me that the church offered the greatest possibility for genuine international connection of the sort that I had not yet known, in all my extensive international experience. Church partnership offered the possibility of ties based on mutuality and warm personal relations as well as working through differences and misunderstandings.
The second trip, in July, to celebrate the centennial of the Mennonite Church of Congo, confirmed and deepened the revelations of the first trip. But it was also full of lessons about my own limitations. My physical fragility: I injured my knee first thing and limped through the whole three weeks. My ability to make mistakes I was cautioning others against (a wrong turn in the Brussels airport). My psychic fragility: I came to hate the swarming crowds that greeted our delegation of 30 North Americans.
Above all, that trip was a lesson in how unprepared I was to carry out a dream that had emerged between the two trips, to write a book about the church. Shyness and fatigue overcame me when it came to taking notes, talking to new people, or even making connections with people who had written or been featured in the book I’d edited–a collection of centennial stories called The Jesus Tribe.
And yet I needed to go back. I knew this but I didn’t know how or why. I only knew that there were things I needed to do before I could know if, why, and how I would continue this Congo connection. I began doing those things immediately after I returned. I have written about that here. The preparations included signing up for spiritual direction, losing weight, getting in shape, finishing and publishing a book, working on the church partnership, praying, meditating, becoming a member of the church we’d been attending for two years, working on my relationship with my husband, working on my confidence and self-esteem, writing and more writing, and deepening and broadening my ties with Congolese Mennonites. And then things fell into place and now here we are, about to actually do it.
By the way, I watch bemused as Vic suffers the crisis of confidence that I felt during my second trip–“I thought I could do this but it is harder than I thought.” He’s technologically gifted but dealing with A-V involves a whole new set of technology, which is still spread out over our dining room table.
I have inevitably high expectations of this trip and of myself. In the past I would have tried to knock down these expectations because expectations have seldom served me well. They have led to disappointment. And there has always been an element of magical thinking in my expectations–the possibilities, the signs, mean that it was meant to be this way. I took some magical thinking with me on my second trip.
Now I can say that I have almost none of that. I have done my homework and prepared as best I know how. While I have little control over the outcome of what happens from now on, I do know that I have cleared the channels for Spirit to work through me. This is not a magical expectation but an openness to magic because that is how God works.
As miraculous as anything is the sustained certainty that I have about being on this path. I have no doubt that, for whatever reason, I should be doing exactly this. But “should” is the wrong word. There is no “should” in what I am doing. Nor is it like the voice of God in the night calling me with a definite mission, a task. I have not been moved by someone’s challenge, an altar call. It is, rather, a somewhat plodding necessity, one thing leading to another, a combination of joy, duty, problem-solving, obligation, opportunity, revelation, adventure, relationship.
Love is the single word for it. It is a bit like parenthood. You start it and then there’s no turning back. Turning back is not a possibility, nor would you want to, even if it were possible, because it changes who you are and shapes what you do in the world and you become attached to all involved, including the person you have become.
the practical mystic 