Treasures, Part IV

 My worship corner at home

"Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and rust, or--worse!--stolen by burglars.  Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moths and rust and burglars.  It's obvious, isn't it?  The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being."  Matthew 6:19-21 (Message)

In this series I've been thinking about treasures. I'm not the sort of person that collects a lot of trinkets that I'd be unwilling to get rid of.  I've moved enough times in my life to understand that "the fewer the possessions to transfer, the fewer things you get attached to, the better."  Besides, missionary kids have been noted by the researchers for treasuring their relationships as "home," rather than assigning the emotions of "home" to possessions that get lugged around.

So I can pat myself on the back, as might you, that my treasures are few, and those are valued because they symbolize relationships with people I love, rather than things, per se.  God's not asking us to give up our attachments to those relationships, is He?  He was talking about materialistic people, right?  He can't be asking us fix our hearts only on "treasure in heaven" in all ways, including our interpersonal connections!

You may be expecting to hear me say, "Wrong," to the above questions, but I'm not going to. I do believe that the godly way life is to value connections with one another, to assign meaning to those intangible ways in which we bring each other joy through community.

What I've wondered about, as I meditated on the passage above and on my few treasures, was whether I have any things that symbolize the value I put on the connection I have with God.  I don't have a "God piano," or a "God set of e-mails" or a "God quilt."  I do have a collection of years and years of worship journals, but frankly, I just can't see myself sitting down and reading through them with the enjoyment I have when I reread the first year of e-mails between me and Husband.  Is that bad? I have mulled it over for some time since I thought of the concept of treasures being symbols of relationship.  Some people have a rosary, or a cross of some sort.  But I come from a church that tends to avoid symbols like these in a well-intentioned effort to lift the heart away from things and to God himself.

A thought has taken shape as I've pondered these things.  I have concluded, at least for the time being, that my treasures that symbolize connection to God are places.

For me, these are the places where my thoughts quiet down and my inner ears become open.  They are places where I have spent time alone, and where I have plowed through some pretty significant inner stuff as I prayed--often without words.  They are places like the worship amphitheater at a summer camp where I worked as a college student.  My room looking out into a Finnish forest at a school where I worked for a year at the age of 22.  My couch by the picture window in my little house in the woods, up on a hill above the Napa Valley in California.  The beach at Lincoln City, Oregon.  My worship corner by the window in our bedroom at home, where I'm writing this.  These are all precious treasures.  And they can't be stolen, or get moth-eaten, or rust, because they exist as much in memory as in reality.

Hmmm.

Do you have any treasures that symbolize a connection to God?  I'd be interested in hearing about them.

Treasures, Part III

The quilt we made last summer

I've talked about my treasures, the piano and the binders, and this morning I have another treasure to tell you about.

When I was a young girl, my mom gave me a sampler to stitch, just like the girls "in the olden days" used to do. As I recall, it had cross stitch and embroidery on it. I started with much interest, then got frustrated at times with having to take out my wrongly-done work, and finally lost interest altogether. As a young adult I was able to finish a number of cross stitch projects, but I never did take to embroidery or sewing my own clothes or some of the other stereotypically "girly" needle-and-thread arts.

Fast forward to now. My mother-in-law owns a quilting machine or two.  She takes in jobs for people in her area of Arizona, keeping very busy with her quilting business. As I looked over the various quilts she was doing a couple of Christmases ago, I got a hankering to try a project myself. I've made little baby quilts, but never a really huge project.

As I'm wont to do, I enthusiastically announced my project and talked about designs, and then got cold feet. I was afraid I'd do an inexact, messy job, and people would think badly of me. I was afraid I had bit off more than I would want to chew, and people would think badly of me. I was afraid I'd lose interest and quit, as I did with that long-ago sampler, and people would think badly of me. But by this time I'd committed myself. Mom was expecting me to do it, Husband was expecting me to do it, and we'd even planned a vacation to Arizona so that I could work under the gracious tutelage of Mom.

So I quilted. As long-time readers of my blog know, I picked out the design, selected the fabric, and was off on my quilt-making marathon. And the usual bumps in the road showed up.  Blocks didn't match up. I did things wrong and had to rip them out. I managed to cut fabric pieces too small, having not watched my ruler carefully enough, and wasted some of the precious fabric. Mom sounded a bit skeptical at first about the colors I'd chosen. I broke a sewing machine needle or two. And so it went. But before we left I had a really truly bona-fide quilt top pieced together. Hurray!  I took it home, added the borders, and then sent it back down to Mom, who bless-her-heart had agreed to finish it off the backing, edging and machine quilting.

And then it arrived back at our house. And wow! I loved, Loved, LOVED it. Mom had taken my hard work and funny edges and bulged-out places and turned my quilt into a thing of beauty. The richly colored quilt graces our bed, and I still get happy every time I look at it. I'm happy because Mom and I did it together, and it was a labor of love for both of us. And I'm happy because in the end she and Husband both seemed proud of it and thought it was beautiful. And I'm happy because it provided memorable happy hours of chit-chat at Mom's house as I worked on it.

If the "moths and rust and burglars" got our quilt, I'd be really sad. It symbolizes the warm welcome and love I've received from Husband's Mom ever since my life merged with his, and how much I treasure that. Because I chose to go with colors and designs that Husband would like, and because of the work Mom and I did together to create the quilt, it binds all three of us together in my thoughts. I like that. A lot.

Thanks, Mom!

Treasures, Part II

The noteworthy two binders of e-mails from Feb. 1, 2000 to April 10, 2001

"Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and rust, or--worse!--stolen by burglars.  Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moths and rust and burglars.  It's obvious, isn't it?  The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being."  Matthew 6:19-21 (Message)

Yesterday I talked about my first treasure: my piano and what it symbolizes.  The second treasure I own is a set of two binders containing all the e-mails Husband and I wrote to each other over our first year of getting acquainted--printed off with super-small-sized type to save paper.  

Husband's first e-mail hit my inbox on February 1, 2000.  It was a request for information on the latest in elementary education.  I knew he was a high school principal, and I thought this was the lamest pickup line I'd ever heard. 

Truth is, I wasn't the kind of 38-year old who had heard many pickup lines in her life.  But I took this one to be a pickup line because our mutual friend Jennifer had been doing a bit of matchmaking and told me she envisioned us "at least being good friends, if not more."  What Husband neglected to mention in that first e-mail (which was not intended as a pickup line, so he insists) was that he was about to interview for an elementary principal position. Aware that I taught the graduate Issues in Education class, he figured I could give him the quick summary of what the hot topics were before he faced the search committee.

I wrote back sincerely, answering his question.  He saw something interesting in what I said and responded, extending the conversation.  So I wrote back again.  And we were off on the beginning of our journey together.

I possess only this one set of our e-mails from back then; we've both switched educational institutions and e-mail addresses and computer operating systems, so the digital version is lost.  These two binders are it--that word-for-word, black-and-white historical record of how we came to love one another.  Not many people own a treasure like that.  Those two berry-pink binders are a treasure to us because they hold in detail the memories, the reminders of our individual hopes and dreams of ten years ago, and the negotiations of two lives coming ever closer to being joined in a comfortable fit.

Once in a while I open one of the binders up, as I did the other night, and we giggle over some paragraph or other.  This week's laughter was over his invented list of about fifteen two-word pet names for me ("Honey Bunny" is probably the most pedestrian), offered up after we'd officially been dating a few months.  Thanks goodness none of the others stuck; Honey Bunny does reappear from time to time!

The odd thing is that the last e-mail is dated April 2001, yet we got married in July of that year, and we were geographically 500 miles apart during those months leading up to our wedding.  Where did the last few months go?  Why are they not in the collection?  Did we just not feel the urge to write anymore after discussing banana bread for our wedding reception?

In any case, I would feel very sad if the "moths and rust and burglars" took away our two berry-pink binders.  The memories would fuzz over and we'd not have that touchstone, that paper picture that still speaks so sweetly of our beginnings.

[to be continued]

Treasures, Part I

My nephews in with the below-mentioned piano in our music room

"Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and rust, or--worse!--stolen by burglars.  Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moths and rust and burglars.  It's obvious, isn't it?  The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being."  Matthew 6:19-21 (Message)

What are your treasures?

I was thinking about mine the other day, and I have several.  The first to come to mind is my Samick grand piano, a heavy-as-lead instrument given me by my mother when I graduated from college. It's not the piano itself that is the treasure. This piano symbolizes my mother's supportive and motivational presence in my life for all my years so far.  She is the one who constantly fostered my interest in becoming musically trained, who gave me the determined conviction that a woman can do whatever she sets her mind to do, who raised me to live with the assumption that an educated woman is a happy woman.  She's the one who has modeled a love of the arts and of reading.  But more than that, the piano she gave me symbolizes a giving spirit.

Over the years in the mission field, my mom had a deal with her patients:  "If I'm on call when you deliver, I'll be there to deliver your baby.  If I'm not on call and you want me to be the one to deliver your baby, you pay $100 more for me to come."  That $100 in Malaysia was equivalent to about $35 in the United States, so it was minimal.

Patients were thrilled with the deal, and so was my mom.  That money was her "investment money," which she saved to buy grand pianos for the local church, the worship/lecture hall in the mission hospital, and several other mission locations.  That investment money bought typewriters for a boarding school in Indonesia, as I recall, and possibly beds for their dorm rooms as well.  (With all the various projects and the passage of time, my memory has gotten a bit fuzzy.) That investment money from deliveries off-call was Mama's "fun money" to do whatever project she wanted to do.

So the thought of my mom and pianos always brings me around to the other treasure she gave me before she ever gave me a piano:  a commitment to open-heartedness and "open-pocketedness" to help others in need.  I have my own little "investment money" fund now, and the fun of looking for God's/my next project is greater than I can express.

When I think of what I would most regret losing, should the "moths and rust and burglars" get it, my piano would be the first possession I'd miss, not because of its value, but because of all of this which it symbolizes.

Thank you, Mama!

Your Inner Zamboni

Sometimes I wonder if there's a bit of Zamboni going on at night while I'm asleep.  I have a rough day with events and conversations that really leave me torqued up.  My ice is scratched up and cracked, so to speak, as I've missed my jumps and spins, and at times landed ungracefully on my rump with a bump.  I go to bed rattled, dreading the morrow.

And while I sleep, it's like a little Zamboni goes to work (perhaps the metaphor is extended by the fact that I hear the parking lot cleaners rumble through the Wal-mart lot at 4:00 every morning, a quarter mile away). That little Zamboni scrapes off the roughened scratches, picks up the debris of the previous day, smooths the surfaces over a bit, fills in the cracks and leaves a glossy finish, ready for the jumps, spins and sweeping turns of the coming day.

Not always, but often.

Is it my dreams that do it?  The unconsciousness of my brain that gives me a much-needed break?  My guardian angel who soothes the sore muscles of my soul and tidies up my mental landscape as I sleep so that facing another day seems possible?  I don't know.  Does this happen for you, too?

International Women's Day

Today, March 8, is International Women's Day.  According to the website promoting this day, celebration of International Women's Day (IWD) began in 1911 at the suggestion of socialists who wanted to improve the lot of women in the United States.  Ironically, while a number of countries (China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam) now celebrate International Women's Day as a holiday, the United States does not.

We have come so far, yet there is still so far to go before women are treated as well as men in the boardroom, at home, in the workplace, in government, in the classroom, in the health clinic and so on.  The younger generations in North America tend to speak as though the problem is solved.  But it's not.

I recently finished reading the book Half the Sky by WuDunn and Kristof, after seeing Oprah Winfrey interview the two authors on her show one Friday afternoon. The interview was riveting, but it was no match for the book.  My world is changed.

The title of this book refers to the Chinese proverb "Women hold up half the sky."  The authors talk about the oppression of women worldwide, using statistics and the personal stories of many women to show that when you improve opportunities and treatment of women, the entire community benefits.  The "stars" of this book are the women who have seen a glimpse of opportunity and changed the future for themselves and their children.  But there are other "stars" in the book: the people who have helped women in a myriad of ways, in many countries, to find escape from horrible situations and to see that hope.  The book is a call to action for the reader.

The impressive thing is that this is not a one-note book.  It's not just about human trafficking, not just about female genital mutilation, not just about fistulas, not just about the lack of education for girls.  It takes the whole plight of women around the world into account, and leaves you unable to finish the book without seeing some cause you can take up, some way in which you can personally help, even if you have minimal resources.  The book ends by listing organizations that you can join in order to help women with the cause that most touches your heart.

Add to this book the Greg Mortenson books (Three Cups of Tea, Stones Into Schools), and Khaled Hosseini's book A Thousand Splendid Suns, and it felt to me like, as one student coined the phrase yesterday regarding his learning, "someone put a stick of dynamite in my head and blew it up, forcing me to become more broad-minded."  How I love learning that is grounded in the liberal arts, in reading widely, in listening to the voices of people different from me!

Happy International Women's Day.  Use it to make this world a better place for a girl or woman somewhere.

A Few More Fools?

In the royal courts of old Europe, the kings and queens used to employ jesters, or fools, to entertain them and their guests.  These individuals are stereotypically believed to have worn colorful clothing, including floppy three-pointed hats with jingle bells at the endpoints, ringing out a merry sound. And the fool typically carried a fake scepter, making fun of his patron. In reality, there were probably a variety of costumes used by the fools who entertained in the courts.

Fools were either natural-born nitwits, or individuals who were given "license," so to speak, to act like nitwits. There was some sense that a natural fool had been "touched by God," and therefore possessed a kind of wisdom and counsel that others didn't have. The fool didn't care about politics, didn't care about the organized church, didn't care about his own safety, and therefore could be candid. 

We can see in Shakespeare's plays that the whole point of having a fool in the court was not only to amuse the occupants of a room. The fool was also expected to criticize his audience, including the king and/or queen.  It's hard for me to imagine, but one queen is said to have gotten upset when her fool was not severe enough with her. On the other hand, when you're a leader in perilous times, having the direct word of God come through a jester/fool would be comforting, no matter if it were painful.

My young women's Bible study group was meeting at our house this past Wednesday, studying the story of Elijah. We were noticing how Elijah appeared and made pronouncements that nailed people to the wall.  Suddenly Kristin (an English teacher) observed, "Elijah operated like a jester."

I was intrigued as I considered her hypothesis.  This prophet shows up out of nowhere, tells off a powerful king, and disappears again.  He frolics by a brook where he's fed by birds, he demands a widow's last meal and then multiplies it over time.  He revives her son who has died, and then takes off again to engineer a showdown between God and an idol (Baal), with the accursed king looking on.  He seems to have no political sensibilities, uses hyperbole freely, and makes fun of Baal as his priests go into a frenzy, trying to produce rain.  At one point he jeers, "What's the matter with your god?  Maybe he's busy sitting on the toilet."  It really does have the feel of a court jester to it.

Prophets seem to have disappeared over time, as have the court jesters.  We are more civilized folk now, with committees and legislative bodies and policies and laws to tell us when we're headed the wrong way and direct us aright.  It's difficult to find a fool who can use humor and wisdom, who is "touched by God" so to speak, to speak the truth to leaders and followers alike.  Think about it:  do you know any?

I'm wondering if our world could use a few more fools.

My Sweet Moca

I had to take my sweet Moca to the veterinarian yesterday.  I've written about her a number of times on this blog, including the times she's gone anorexic on us.  Well, we didn't realize at that time what the slightly elevated markers in her blood tests presaged.  This time she has quit eating and drinking again, but it seemed like it was more.  She was having trouble standing and walking, and clearly wasn't feeling good.

It turns out she has cancer in her kidneys which likely had started two years ago when she first quit eating, and they're now shutting down.  The kidney markers are 10 times higher than they should be; it sounds like the vet hasn't seen counts like that in a long time, if ever.  The vet told me that there's nothing more they can do for her.  They can hydrate her and try to keep her going for a while, but that won't last long.  So I brought her home from the vet's last night to spend another night with us before having her put to sleep today.  It's breaking my heart.

The vet says she's not in pain.  She just doesn't feel good and she's getting weaker.  This morning she can't stand up, but she does hold her head up (I took this picture a little while ago, lying on her special towel at the foot of our bed).  It's hard for me to take her to be put to sleep when she can still purr a tiny bit and talk back to me plaintively when I speak to her.  So I'm waiting.  I guess I'll call the vet and find out what to expect with the course of the disease, and discuss whether we should keep her home longer.  She seems happy being here at home.

Saying goodbye is so heartbreaking.  As Husband remarked to me, "You've had her longer than you've had me."  And that's true.  She's 11 years old, and it was 10 years ago last month that our relationship got its start.  My kitties were my company when I was single.  They made my living areas much more pleasant.  Cousin Heidi did me a big favor 20-some years ago when I told her I was lonely in my little apartment, and she suggested I get a cat.

It seems like just yesterday that Moca was a little chocolatey tyke who could hardly walk on her little feet, with her big head and bright green eyes.  She would race around my house, skidding on the wood floors, chasing the laser pointer spot as I played with her.  She and her brother managed to tear up my wingback chair with their sharp little claws.  I've kept the chair with it's loops pulled out of the fabric, and am sitting on it as I write this.  And they managed to tear up my first doctoral robe, which they used as a ladder to climb up to the shelf at the top of my closet.  It was an unhappy discovery; the robe now serves as my "rainy day robe" since our university holds outdoor graduations, rain or shine.  

Moca's funny personality has been a source of interest and entertainment for us over the years.  I'll miss her little voice telling me off about my absence when I return from a trip.  I'll miss her delight as I watch Husband rough her up on her favorite petting places--the loopy towel and her Arizona green rocks.  I'll miss walking by the bed and seeing her tail hanging out from where she's taking a nap behind the bed skirt.  I'll miss the way she often climbs up by my pillow when we go to bed, and lets me hold her paw in my hand for awhile.

My sweet, sweet kitty.  Be at peace.