I bought my wedding dress out of a Talbots catalog.  I also made our wedding cake and a lovely lady in Huntsville helped me frost it.  The flowers came from Archie Stapleton’s farm in Sewanee.  My best friend, Carolyn, and I had our hair done and then, on the way to church to get dressed, I realized the A/C had conked out in my car;  when I rolled down the window, it was so hot, it felt like a hair dryer was running on my face-I wondered if it was an omen that marriage is hell.  With the heat index, it was considerably over 100 degrees and that was the hot as all get-out summer when syringes were washing up on the Jersey shore.

Today is going to be a humdinger for heat like that Saturday, 28 years ago.  Sherod’s out early doing some mowing; the work I intend to do today is to clean my dad’s little cottage, after a quick run to the curb market and a hospital visit.  I’ll be worrying about the chicken girls in this heat and trying to keep my plants from scorching.  In this horribly broken world of ours, I will also be giving thanks for the crazy Mallowman I love and for the wild ride we’ve been on for all these years.  I know we don’t have forever, none of us do, but we have today and that is more than enough.

With words choking my throat and tears stinging in my eyes, I simply could not watch the news continue to stream in about the cop killings in Dallas. My stepson, Charles, who has been in  my life since he was a teenager and who is an incredibly courageous, kind person, is a law enforcement officer in Florida. I kept thinking of him, and his wife, Penny, and of Grace, his daughter, and Robert, his son, about how fragile their normal truly is.   There was much about the work I did with ECF before going to work for Ascension that simply did not fit. However, it was one of the true privileges of my whole working experience as an adult to serve with Ron Byrd, an African American priest from Michigan, and to facilitate training at the parish where he grew up in Inkster, MI, a traditionally African American parish. As Ferguson was unfolding, he and I were travelling together and I sat and listened to him describe the anguish of raising a son who is always so at risk. I carry Ron and his family in my heart, as much as I carry my stepson and his family. This morning, the horror was unbearable.

About to explode out of my skin, I did what I have learned carries me through horror. I went out to work in the garden. A good part of my work all summer long involves weeding. I have written elsewhere how the parable of the good seeds and weed (Mt 13) has become incredibly real to me this year. The weeds got ahead of us in the garden and recent efforts to open spaces for our plantings to grow have helped me see how incredibly hard it is to tell good from bad, to avoid pulling up that which you wanted to tend to and protect. I have to be slow, careful, very focused. In the hot Alabama sun that beats down without mercy, it is hard work.

This morning, I was working on a flower bed that shows what a neophyte I am in the matter of gardening. I had a space, I had some flowers I knew I liked, and with only minimal “big picture planning”, I began to put in plants. Right now, I have roses, blackeyed susans, angelonias, phlox, gerbera daisies and hydrangeas in bloom. It looks a little schizophrenic – certainly, it isn’t the carefully composed flowerbed that results from a garden master plan. But it is my pride and joy and I pounce on even the smallest weed when it’s time to weed that bed in the loose weeding rotation I have set up for myself. I have learned to pull gently at the most common weed in my garden, trying to get as much of the root structure out, along with the plant.

I worked with one that was maybe 3 inches tall. Pulling slowly, I watched the tap root emerge and then, when I thought I was about done, a lateral root started coming out of the ground too. By the time I was done, I realized this three inch little plant had about 15 inches of root (not even capillaries, root root). How long did the root structure grow before that little plant came out of the ground? When I think about the issues we are struggling with, I ask myself, how deep and webbed and complex is the part of these issues we can’t even see? How much patience does it take to bring to light and then work through those parts of our communal life that are choking the very life out of us?

The garden is teaching me some answers, and all of them involve hard work, even when the sun beats down with such ferocity and the air is so thick with humidity it’s hard to breathe. Resilience. Strength. The capacity to  be filled with great joy and much hope in response to the tiniest flowers and tenderest new growth. Acceptance that I know next to nothing and am always just starting to learn. Keeping straight the difference between resting and quitting. Not quitting…just. not. quitting.  None of us.

In a sense, today is the last full day of vacation for me. Tomorrow, along with ensuring Hans catches his plane back home, I will write a sermon and sometime around 4:30 or 5:00, the internal shift that happens on the way to Sunday morning services will kick in. Today we will visit Selma and an old abandoned cluster of houses down by the river that make for cool photography. We’ll swim and I will do the last bits of gardening I set myself to do as part of my stay-cation. My big brother has a keen and witty sense of humor, he has kept Sherod and me in stitches all week long—I think the laughter, more than anything, has made this a most wonderful time.

As things wind down, these are the gleanings: no two growing seasons are alike. For all kinds of reasons, both understood and mysterious, the weeds in the garden really bested us this year. I’ve been in charge of harvesting most of the week and most of the week, I’ve found myself tossing one tomato after another because it was mushy and nasty on the bottom—blossom rot, I think they call it. Weeds become fearsome after a certain point—putting my hands down into plants overgrown with weeds, I have been fearful that I’d get bitten by a snake, or some biting kind of bug—not so fearful I wouldn’t do it, but mindful that the risk had increased significantly.

How fruits and vegetables ripen,the timetable for harvesting, continues to be a mystery to me. Every morning this week, I’ve been out picking blueberries, intent on figuring out how to accurately predict which berries would ripen next. Each morning I’ve realized I’m clueless, not able to see patterns of any kind though I remain convinced they’re there. It would make things easier, I would probably be more efficient and effective if I could figure that out, but there is something to be said about not knowing, about the practice of looking carefully, going slowly enough to make sure the berries I’m about to pick are blue all the way around—the ones that aren’t will have a patch of deep garnet red that’s beautiful—and will add a lot of acidity to anything I prepare with them.

It probably sounds more than a little hokey, but not knowing which berries will be ripe for picking in the morning makes me more grateful, as I find each berry that’s ready and carefully put it in the trug I use for my harvesting.

Last year, one of my main jobs was picking the green beans. That hasn’t changed this year. Remembering the large harvest of last year, I got ready to start this year all confident about doing this thing. I had to learn how to see again. The bean pods are so similar to the stems and branches of the bean bushes that it takes very deliberate seeing to find them. I’m finding the rhythm again and have remembered the places on the bushes where I am most likely to find the beans to pick but here too, I have to be careful and attentive.   These are the vegetables that require me to bend over the furthest and each year, I am a year older; I actually feel it, though after a few days, it seems like my back aches a little less and I have more stamina. Even the body forgets, doesn’t it?

And then, there is the absolute delight in watching my brother discover the glory of a real tomato, freshly picked and still warm, and what it tastes like with a bit of good olive oil, some salt and a nice slice of bread. Nothing makes me feel like I am extending real hospitality like being able to offer something we’ve grown ourselves.

My flowers are good, though the heat has meant I have fewer roses blooming and I’ve been experimenting with drip irrigation, determined to be a better steward of water. Today, my last bit of gardening will be to assemble a trellis and start training one of my roses to climb it.

Along with the laughter and visit and good meals, the work has been steady so at night, I’ve crawled into bed dead tired,  asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I hold lightly, but thankfully, the sense of safety and belonging that comes from sharing a bed with the man I love, with our cat Spot asleep where I can feel her against my feet, and as I am lulled by the gentle snores of Daisy on the floor on my side of the bed, and Mo on Sherod’s side.

Thursday, I had finished a class for the prevention of child sexual abuse, after a fairly long string of back-to-back work days filled to overflowing –some of the work was very hard, some of it just the warp and woof of ministry: tending to people, baptizing, funeralizing, visiting, listening. I was exhausted and I had a nasty summer cold. If I looked straight ahead, this was my view. Summer weather–thunder bumpers come through with heavy rain and sometimes, amazing lightning shows.  What was more striking this time was the clear boundary, the line of demarcation that reminded me that storms do have a beginning and an end.  That was helpful.  It wasn’t only that I would get to drive out past the storm, but that I was driving straight to my vacay-staycay-“bro”cation.  Hans, my brother, would be flying in from Holland two days later and today, I would get to sit out on our new deck with my dad and brother, drinking coffee late into the morning, laughing and breathing deep.  Shabbat Shalom…

Day before yesterday, I got up early and went out to the garden. I had promised L’s mother I would bring her flowers for the house because that evening she would have people coming to visit with her and pay their respects after the death of her son.  I was able to take her quite a lot of different flowers and the colors were beautiful.  It was a fleeting gift–I imagine already lots, if not most, of the flowers have wilted and faded.  It was a drop in an infinity of loss.  And I also was so grateful I could do that little bit to celebrate L’s life.

Yesterday, along with assisting with L’s funeral, I was the celebrant at our regular Wednesday evening Eucharist that was turned into a particularly beautiful and holy moment when the Rector Emeritus of Ascension, his wife, and their children joined our small evening community to celebrate the couple’s 66th anniversary.  One of their sons was a year behind me in seminary and is now a bishop.  Another son is a new friend and peer in the work of ministry in the River Region. Another, a daughter, is an extraordinarily talented fiber artist. Every single member of the family is accomplished and it is something when a family becomes the choir that sings the Gloria, and then, the offertory as I set the Table. They sang Abide In Me, a cappella, with glorious harmonies.  Goose bumps lovely.

All that was pretty spectacular.  But it was what happened during the Prayers of the People that had several of us speechless.  First, an explanation. Our former rector has been slipping into the knots and tangles of age-related cognitive impairment and recently has taken another downward turn so even communicating has become much harder.

I had asked one of the members of the parish who regularly attends our evening service to lead us in the Prayers of the People, but as she started the first petition, this person who has lost so much of himself, began to read the petition with her, as we all looked on in wonder.  Then it was his voice alone, sometimes a bit hesitant, but for almost all the prayer, strong and sure, that carried us through our petitions.  Sunday after Sunday, year after year–for decades–this priest had said words that became a part of the very core of him, of a part that nothing has been able to steal away.  That may change.  In the end, it all slips away from all of us doesn’t it?  But how glorious to see how all those prayers we say stay with us, carry us through, even as the sun sets.

It continues to be an extremely busy week with unexpected challenges and I will work tomorrow and Saturday, as well as extra hours on Sunday.  I wore my fancy shoes all day yesterday and early this morning I woke up with an awful cramp down the back of my leg, a reminder of my own “no longer a spring chicken-ness”.  That is why I try to make sure I continue to find small infinities to gladden my heart.  These were the small infinities of beauty that lit up my morning before I headed out to work.  We find God in all things…

Dear Mom:

Tomorrow it is 5 years since you died. This is the first time the date has also fallen on a Sunday, the day you died. With Dad next door in La Casita Blanca, it has been both hard and easy to retrace the steps, remember these days, five years ago. Tomorrow evening, though, we will have friends for dinner and I hope so much that Dad will be too entertained to pause to remember the very end. Some of the story you just have to let go of.

In the morning, I will be preaching at Ascension, a church I would have loved for you to see, especially at Christmas time and Easter. The lessons for this Sunday started out to be hard enough: Luke tells the story of Jesus raising the widow’s son from the dead. I would have much preferred a parable, especially the one of the Precious Pearl, which over time has become one of my most favorite—I hear it speak of our capacity to understand what is most essential and let go of everything else that clutters and clouds our vision, leaves us clinging to what’s penultimate, and how, in those moments of illumination, we draw closer to the reign of God. But that’s not I choice I was given and so tomorrow, I work with what I have.

What makes it hard is that on Wednesday, I officiated at a pauper’s burial and then went to visit and anoint a man I had come to cherish who was close to death. Yesterday, I got word that this brave, highly educated and travelled man, a member of our parish, had slipped away. I will officiate at his graveside funeral on Monday. Today, I have gotten word that another man—a man my age, an absolutely remarkable person with a different kind of courage and a wonderful sense of humor, has also died. I am relieved for both of them—each in hisown way has finally been freed of the ways in which our bodies get ravaged, worn out, trap us. I will help to bury this person too, a couple of days later, and both times I will be reminded that “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

Here’s the most important thing I have learned amidst all the dying, Mom. I have learned to let go some more of fear. As a child I was terrified of so much. As an adult, I tried to learn my fear away,  especially my fear of death, or at least into submission—if I could study enough, understand enough, know enough about this impenetrable mystery, I would not be devastated when it happened to you, or Dad or anybody else close to me. Underneath that impulse to control, the fear still raged. It wasn’t until you actually died that the fear began to ease. Turns out, the way to overcome the fear not only of dying, but of living was simple: live in my body—inhabit it, use it, be aware of it, in more ways than I could have ever imagined.

Last week, I was out with one of my favorite gardening tools—a pole digger. It’s hard to use and I still get blisters on my hands though I also have some calluses now. Sometimes, I also have to haul out a heavy ax from Sherod’s workshop because there are some big old roots that get in the way. But all by myself, I dug a hole deep enough and wide enough to receive a beautiful camellia, a gift I was given a few weeks back. I have felt the spray of water on my face as I watered it almost daily and today, I saw one beautiful pink bloom.

Yesterday, I went up to a place you would also love, and spent over a good part of the morning picking blackberries in the hot and humid sun of an Alabama summer day, with the sweat running down my back and the small thorns on the blackberry bush sticking my fingers and the berries staining my hands.

I’ve been stopping as I write, to stir the blackberry jam that’s simmering on the stove. There’s a stool next to the stove so I can overcome that height challenge of mine, to safely pull out the  jars I’ll fill with the jam and then process in an enormous pot. Tomorrow, when the water has cooled enough, I will pick up that pot and by myself, will carry that heavy thing back to the sink, empty all the gallons of water still in it an put it away. Death is not diminished by this work. But when I stand back and look at all the jewel-colored jars of goodness I get to give away, I am too busy being happy to grieve or fear other deaths to come.

I’ve also become braver. Yesterday I sent off the version of my essay that 12 other people will read and critique with me, during the time I spend at the writer’s workshop in Collegeville. I don’t think I’ve ever worked more carefully and thoroughly on a piece of writing. I realized I am feeling totally insecure—I keep telling myself I’ll probably just discover I can write decent blog posts and parish newsletter articles but nothing else, that everyone else’s work is stellar and mine a ‘has-been’ story. But where before, that would have prevented me from trying, this time I just shush those voices and keep working and editing and being glad and excited about that week of work I’ll get to do. All this time I’ve spent on those twenty pages have helped me prepare what amounts to the outline, by chapter, of the book I want to write. Imagine.

So, yes, Mami—even your death had an amazing gift buried in the desolation. In my stronger muscles, in the resilience and determination and loss of fear, there is a hot and dusty and tired and joyful, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Gracias, mami; te quiero…

I sat in the kitchen, pitting plums for my first foray into canning for the season, my first foray into making plum jam as well. Yesterday, I gathered them from my friend’s buggy pulled up close to a tree with branches bending low with the weight of so much fruit. I watched a video about the best way to pit the plumbs—cut twist, cut twist, cut twist again. Easy on the video, in real life, slow work that left my hands wrinkled like raisins and required a lot of patience.

My sister-in-law, Lynn, stood across the small island for our kitchen Sherod made earlier this year. I remember the first time Memorial Day Weekend acquired a new meaning for me. Sherod and I had only been married for 2, maybe 3 years. I knew Lynn’s husband Clyde had been killed in Vietnam. I knew Memorial Day had something to do with fallen soldiers. That day back in the very early 90’s, in Memphis, I answered the phone and heard my sister-in-law’s voice raw with grief as she asked to talk to Sherod. I only heard bits and pieces of the conversation but I got this much: it had already been more than 20 years since Clyde’s death, and still, it was an awfully hard day for Lynn.

In the years since, there has been something of an ebb and flow to the weekend in our household. Some years, all the retrospectives on TV, all those blurred clips with the colors not quite right and the sound distorted, the accent different than we hear on the news these days, all those clips have had the man I love sit rigid, watching the scenes, too well known, play out, flashbacks on TV of his time in Vietnam. Other years, it hasn’t been so bad. I just don’t ever know how it will be. This is the first year, Lynn, Sherod and I have marked this time together.

I kept pitting the plums and heard my sister-in-law describe coming down the stairs of her house, vacuum cleaner in hand, to see the soldiers at her door. How long it took for her husband’s remains to find their way back home, 10 days of waiting. Her oldest was maybe 6. Her youngest 3. Lynn left alone with three little girls, one of them severely disabled and sick.  Clyde was in his early thirties, Lynn in her twenties. Even now, there are letters, bits and pieces of those days in 1970, that are too hard for her to go back and revisit.

Sherod’s mom and dad were children of folks who made it through the grinding poverty of the depression. Juanita and Earl worked hard, really hard, to achieve a level of financial security their parents could never have dreamed of. At 80+ years, Juanita got a passport for the first time in her life and went to Europe with Lynn, to visit her granddaughter Kim, who was stationed in Germany, and was an aviator like her dad had been. All of them women of resilience. Her parent’s daughter, Lynn absorbed the blow of Clyde’s death and kept going, raised daughters, helped raise grandchildren and now is helping raise great-grandchildren and is retired after holding jobs that were pretty thankless, a lot of them.

We talked and cooked and had a nice meal together and I can’t help but get angry, enormously angry, at how blithely we talk of war these days. I know John McCain’s son served in Iraq and so did Joe Biden’s. But there are not many sons or daughters of people with power and money who  have done military service or gotten in harm’s way. Today we were three very ordinary people, doing the ordinary chores of early summer, laughing, enjoying the flowers in the garden, doing stuff most anyone could do. But I didn’t have to listen very carefully (though I did), or look closely at my sister-in-law’s face to know that it is ordinary people’s lives that are carpet-bombed by war. They pick themselves up and keep going. But it is still a lie, a hideous lie, the one that claims, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

These are strange days with time folding back on itself even though there’s no
going back. In the course of 3 years, starting very precisely on May 23rd, 2011 and
ending June 8th, 2014, much of what I knew, what I did, who I was, got lost. It was on
May 23rd of 2011 that I flew to Panama to accompany my mom and dad through my
mom’s last days. June 5th marks the 5th anniversary of her death. Exactly one year
later, on June 5th of 2012, we placed Maria in the residential program where she still
lives. June 8th of 2014 was my last Sunday as priest-in-charge at St. Ambrose.

I get very sad in these weeks—not curl up in a ball kind of sad, but sad enough to struggle to find much to say. It’s that thing of hosting grief, made a bit harder this year by the
hard time Maria is having again.

If it is true that there was enormous loss in that three year span, these days I look at what became possible precisely because of the loss. In those three years, night after night, after night, I walked until I was exhausted, and in the summer, soaked in perspiration, making my way through the South Florida humidity. It was on those walks that I hosted grief, learned how to befriend it in myself. Now, when I receive the grief again, I am able to do so as I work out in the garden of the farm, as I continue to tend to all manner of creatures and life, even if I have an enormous lump in my throat.

When we bought this little farm, there was a magnificent sycamore on the east side
of the house. I can’t even count the number of times I sat under that lovely tree and
simply allowed myself to look up at the beautiful leaves as the breeze played with them. About 6 weeks ago, and in a matter of two weeks, the sycamore took sick and died—just died on us.  In a paradoxical way, I welcomed the sorrow I felt when we had to get it cut down. I welcomed the sadness because I am now so much more connected to, and a part of the land I walk on, the trees that give me shade, the beautiful flowers that give me joy
beyond words, our cats and dogs and chickens, and the ruby-throated hummingbird
that’s back for the summer, and especially, all the fireflies, thousands of them, that
light up our evenings as darkness falls. It took losing everything I thought was
essential to who I am to discover how vastly much more there was for me to do and
be and be a part.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print from this corner of the world.  May this weekend be a time of sabbath, and for those who must still host enormous grief for the loss of those whom they loved and who served even unto death, may gentle breezes and kind sunshine offer some small consolation.

Yesterday, on our way out to grab a bit of lunch at the Highway 80 Café, Lowndes’ finest dining establishment, Sherod reached out from the truck and grabbed the mail in our mailbox. There was an envelope that at first looked like junk mail to me, and then, something made me look more carefully. It was addressed both to my dad and me. I opened it and my heart about stopped beating. My dad’s Green Card. He is now good and truly a permanent resident of this country and within 5 years could apply for citizenship.

It came months sooner than we’d been led to believe by the attorney we worked with and did not involve the interview with Immigration he’d said would happen in August or September and which I had been dreading. When Sherod and I were married and had to have our interview to determine the authenticity of our marriage so I could get my resident visa, I started weeping as soon as I stepped into that INS office in Atlanta and had a hard time stopping. The powerlessness even privileged people like I experience in those offices can be pretty brutal. At any rate, my father and I will not be interviewed, that card is in his hands and all the anxiety of waiting, and making decisions ‘as if’ but not really knowing, is over.

I headed down the road at 6 this morning, on my way to IKEA in Atlanta. This is a real act of love for one who despises the drive, especially since I had to go through Spaghetti Junction in downtown Atlanta. I’ve learned the trick: I close my eyes tight and step on the gas. Works like a dream every time!

I had the list of things my dad needed me to buy for him to finish furnishing his little house. I got those and a few more things. Back a few hours later, I helped him assemble everything but the desk I bought for him. Then I came back to the house and found one of my mother’s most favorite tablecloths, a gift she gave me many years ago. I also gathered set of small crystal pieces that graced the coffee table in my parents’ beautiful house in Panama. I added those to a small pair of candle holders I got for Dad at Ikea and brought it all over to give to him, to help him be able to wake up in the morning and have pieces that help him find himself again, hopefully allow him to realize that along with the loss, there are also unbreakable strands, threads, more precious than gold, that will help him knit a meaningful new life for himself here.

I needed to be able to be so busy this weekend. Not only is it Mother’s Day, a hard one for me more often than not, but we found out on Thursday that despite our best hopes, our girl Maria is not able to come celebrate her 20^th birthday with us next week. I miss my daughter. And I am dwelling on the gratitude for for the birthdays we have gotten to be together, for a husband who has been infinitely patient with my dad (and has figured out a lot about me by watching how my dad operates). I am filled with great gladness seeing my dad’s happy face. Resilience. That’s my word for the year and what I intend to keep practicing till I get it right…

 

My dad is exhausted. He has spent the day moving into his new cottage. This is the first time he has ever been completely responsible for furnishing and decorating his home. He’s going slow both on the décor and the furnishings, trying to get a feel for the space, figuring out what is really essential. But he is very clear and definite about what he wants and what won’t work for him. This is his to do and manage. This afternoon, he was so exhausted that he asked me if I would be willing to make his bed for him and I did so, filled with respect and deep admiration.

We kid my dad about his lack of cooking skills, and how he has introduced crunchy fried eggs to our family. Yet, I was strangely touched, watching him pore over the instructions for the induction hotplate he’s bought for himself. That, and the new microwave, will be what he’ll use for his cooking.   Imagine being almost 89 years old, used to getting all kinds of help and learning how to do your own laundry, your own cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, all the big and small chores of running a household. Sherod and I help but are also trying to give him space to find his own way.

A few years ago, in one of the moments of shocking realization after my mom’s death and Maria’s move to BARC, I wrote something to the effect that it was awfully strange to find that I had to define myself increasingly by subtractions rather than addition. I was—and am—clueless. I have not had to watch my spouse die, not had to sell the house built with dreams of retirement, not travelled to visit a daughter and ended up allowing just about everything else that defined my life to slip away, just like that, while I find my way in a foreign land.

Dad looks happy, as well exhausted tonight. He had this small, very satisfied grin as he looked at the shower curtain he had just put up in his new bathroom. The new beds he got for Mouse and Pia are already in the house and he has a case of Campbell’s vegetable soup cans good to go for several meals this week. Even with all the subtractions, all the wrenching losses, he keeps going, keeps being as courtly and unfailingly polite, and determined to make the best of an awfully hard situation.

This. This is what real courage looks like.