I just returned from a short "weekend" trip to visit my grandmother who is recovering from a knee replacement. After 3 weeks in the hospital and then at a nursing facility (with a special kind of bed for her knee), she got home on Tuesday and on Thursday night I arrived.
It was a little miraculous - I actually got the chance to help my grandma out. My fierce independence comes from both sides of my family - and my grandma is no exception. Up until her surgery she continued to do things that she really should have had other people do.
Last night, as I was checking to make sure she had everything she needed she was trying to commit to memory the earliest she could take her next pain pill. I told her and then reminded her that if she had any question, she could certainly wake me up. Her response: "Ok. Pause I know. Pause No." Meaning, I understand and thank you, but no, I won't be waking you.
With my grandma, this time around, it was easy to just go ahead and do for her what she had a hard time getting to. However, it never works to ask her what I can do to help her.
I know I'm much the same. It was a privilege to be able to help my grandma - and fun to be with her.
Grandma being off her feet also meant that I got to sit down with her and her recipe box and, as I copied some of them I got to ask questions about them and hear what she had made some of the recipes for. One of her recipes called for wild rice. Grandma mentioned that she puts the seasoning packet from the Uncle Ben's wild rice box. Because I mentioned that I would probably buy in bulk and would want to look at the ingredients in the packet - Grandma made me find the box she had and take it with me. (There are 23 herbs and spices....so, maybe I won't be buying in bulk).
I also left with a Krumkaka Iron. One my parents gave her early on in their marriage, but that Grandma never uses. I've always borrowed my mom's in the past - but have had to remember to do so at Thanksgiving - and have intended to get my own for a couple of years.
Finally, I got a couple days away where I only had very simple tasks to do. I read a bunch. Ate a lot of soup. Took a nap both Friday and Saturday. I'm so glad I went.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
We Live at the Plate.
"It's just that there is sentiment here to use our bequest to challenge and invite others also to step up to the plate. "
This is a direct quote from someone who approached me this week with a thought toward helping to support my congregation's ministry, particularly to the homeless. I am really trying hard not to be offended. Particularly because up until this moment, this entity now trying to challenge others to "step up to the plate" has been nonexistent in the realm of social justice, or even in the community. They have been invited over and over again.
My congregation does a lot with very little. We work hard. We go over and above "the plate" and have been doing so for a number of years. The suggestion was made that my congregation do a fund drive to raise money that would then be matched by this entity. I feel like saying - why don't we count all of the numerous hours, the heartbreaking conversations, the thousands that we have already put in, and plan to continue to put in.....and consider that you are making an attempt to match that. You'll come no where close.
But, I won't say it like that. I might mention that we are already working on a couple of other ways to financially support our work, and they might see that as "matching." Grrrr.. Sometimes I really don't like being diplomatic.
This is a direct quote from someone who approached me this week with a thought toward helping to support my congregation's ministry, particularly to the homeless. I am really trying hard not to be offended. Particularly because up until this moment, this entity now trying to challenge others to "step up to the plate" has been nonexistent in the realm of social justice, or even in the community. They have been invited over and over again.
My congregation does a lot with very little. We work hard. We go over and above "the plate" and have been doing so for a number of years. The suggestion was made that my congregation do a fund drive to raise money that would then be matched by this entity. I feel like saying - why don't we count all of the numerous hours, the heartbreaking conversations, the thousands that we have already put in, and plan to continue to put in.....and consider that you are making an attempt to match that. You'll come no where close.
But, I won't say it like that. I might mention that we are already working on a couple of other ways to financially support our work, and they might see that as "matching." Grrrr.. Sometimes I really don't like being diplomatic.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Speak to Me That I May Speak
As I've started Christmas cards (only about 1/3rd through....they may be pre-Lent cards), as I've started to write the annual report for the congregation, I've recognized that I'm not so sure how to sum up this year without giving away too much.
It's been a hard year. Not stuff to write in Christmas cards. Not appropriate to share all with the congregation. Oh, they'll hear some, that pertains to the community life, but neither my own faith/personal struggles nor those things that have been the most difficult for me at work....particularly certain ways I've had to be involved in some individuals' lives.
Attached to my faith struggle has been a yearning to hear some direction for my life. Yearning to have something in some arena of my life so completely clear that I would know to head in that direction.
If you read past blog entries, you'll see it. And, it has been the reality of my life in 2008.
What leads me to anxious moments - to those times when I wake up from near-sleep to worry - are those times when I feel I am not enough. Nights are always harder than days. But, that period when I'm almost asleep is often when self-doubts start to wheedle their way to the front of my thoughts. My house isn't clean enough, I feel ugly (my current hair cut has been bothering me of late), I spend too much time at work, I failed a particular person in a particular way, my finances aren't in order....etc...etc.
The one that woke me up last night was the clean house - which is pretty ridiculous, because I believe my house could be company ready with an hour's notice.
I've been reading the "Space" trilogy by C.S. Lewis lately. I'm in the 2nd book - Perelandra in which "Ransom" the main character of the trilogy is sent to Perelandra - or Venus. It is a world at the beginning of its existence and there is one man, the King, who I have yet to meet in the book, and one woman, the Lady, who is "getting older" - or learning more and more. Maleldil (God) has forbidden residence on one piece of land (aka, forbidden eating fruit of one particular tree) and "the Enemy" in the form of someone that Ransom knows, has launch a logic-assault on the Lady. The Enemy is continuously in conversation with her, only stopping when she sleeps, to try to convince her that Maleldil really wants her to make her own choices away from him - but he can't tell her that because then it wouldn't be her own choice. Ransom is doing his best to stay awake and be present throughout this assault of logic - to try to combat the Enemy's arguments and convince the Lady to not go against what Maleldil has said.
Last night, after rationalizing myself out of my worry about my messy house, I picked up the book where I left off and read 2 pages before I came to something that brought me to tears:
"Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. There is a chattering part of the mind which continues, until it is corrected, to chatter on even in the holiest of places. Thus, while one part of Ransom remained, as it were, prostrated in a hush of fear and love that resembled a kind of death, something else inside him, wholly unaffected by reverence, continued to pour queries and objections into his brain. "It's all very well," said this voluble critic, "a presence of that sort! But the Enemy is really here, really saying and doing things. Where is Maleldil's representative?
"The answer which came back to him, quick as a fencer's or a tennis player's riposte, out of the silence and out of the darkness, almost took his breath away. It seemed Blasphemous. "Anyway, what can I do?"babbled the voluble self. "I've done all I can. I've talked till I'm sick of it. It's no good, I tell you." He tried to persuade himself that he, Ransom, could not possibly be Maleldil's representative as the Un-man was the representative of Hell. The suggestion was, he argued, itself diabolical - a temptation to fatuous pride, to megalomania. He was horrified when the darkness simply flung back this argument in his face, almost impatiently. And then - he wondered how it had escaped him till now - he was forced to perceive that his own coming to Perelandra was at least as much of a marvel as the Enemy's. That miracle on the right side, which he had demanded, had in fact occurred. He himself was the miracle."
These paragraphs and others in those 3 pages I read spoke to me. I was in tears - recognizing some of that communication for which I long.
It almost feels a little foolish to say that this was God - and yet, I believe it. I'm thankful for it.
It's been a hard year. Not stuff to write in Christmas cards. Not appropriate to share all with the congregation. Oh, they'll hear some, that pertains to the community life, but neither my own faith/personal struggles nor those things that have been the most difficult for me at work....particularly certain ways I've had to be involved in some individuals' lives.
Attached to my faith struggle has been a yearning to hear some direction for my life. Yearning to have something in some arena of my life so completely clear that I would know to head in that direction.
If you read past blog entries, you'll see it. And, it has been the reality of my life in 2008.
What leads me to anxious moments - to those times when I wake up from near-sleep to worry - are those times when I feel I am not enough. Nights are always harder than days. But, that period when I'm almost asleep is often when self-doubts start to wheedle their way to the front of my thoughts. My house isn't clean enough, I feel ugly (my current hair cut has been bothering me of late), I spend too much time at work, I failed a particular person in a particular way, my finances aren't in order....etc...etc.
The one that woke me up last night was the clean house - which is pretty ridiculous, because I believe my house could be company ready with an hour's notice.
I've been reading the "Space" trilogy by C.S. Lewis lately. I'm in the 2nd book - Perelandra in which "Ransom" the main character of the trilogy is sent to Perelandra - or Venus. It is a world at the beginning of its existence and there is one man, the King, who I have yet to meet in the book, and one woman, the Lady, who is "getting older" - or learning more and more. Maleldil (God) has forbidden residence on one piece of land (aka, forbidden eating fruit of one particular tree) and "the Enemy" in the form of someone that Ransom knows, has launch a logic-assault on the Lady. The Enemy is continuously in conversation with her, only stopping when she sleeps, to try to convince her that Maleldil really wants her to make her own choices away from him - but he can't tell her that because then it wouldn't be her own choice. Ransom is doing his best to stay awake and be present throughout this assault of logic - to try to combat the Enemy's arguments and convince the Lady to not go against what Maleldil has said.
Last night, after rationalizing myself out of my worry about my messy house, I picked up the book where I left off and read 2 pages before I came to something that brought me to tears:
"Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. There is a chattering part of the mind which continues, until it is corrected, to chatter on even in the holiest of places. Thus, while one part of Ransom remained, as it were, prostrated in a hush of fear and love that resembled a kind of death, something else inside him, wholly unaffected by reverence, continued to pour queries and objections into his brain. "It's all very well," said this voluble critic, "a presence of that sort! But the Enemy is really here, really saying and doing things. Where is Maleldil's representative?
"The answer which came back to him, quick as a fencer's or a tennis player's riposte, out of the silence and out of the darkness, almost took his breath away. It seemed Blasphemous. "Anyway, what can I do?"babbled the voluble self. "I've done all I can. I've talked till I'm sick of it. It's no good, I tell you." He tried to persuade himself that he, Ransom, could not possibly be Maleldil's representative as the Un-man was the representative of Hell. The suggestion was, he argued, itself diabolical - a temptation to fatuous pride, to megalomania. He was horrified when the darkness simply flung back this argument in his face, almost impatiently. And then - he wondered how it had escaped him till now - he was forced to perceive that his own coming to Perelandra was at least as much of a marvel as the Enemy's. That miracle on the right side, which he had demanded, had in fact occurred. He himself was the miracle."
These paragraphs and others in those 3 pages I read spoke to me. I was in tears - recognizing some of that communication for which I long.
It almost feels a little foolish to say that this was God - and yet, I believe it. I'm thankful for it.
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