"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And what I CAN do and SHOULD do, by the grace of God I WILL do."

Pretty good way to live, I think. Sometimes doing something is difficult. Today I used tough love on a friend, and will do it again if I think she needs it. We all have faults, but what we can and should do, we must do. Amen ....

Why do I write this blog? I started with every intention of writing sort of a memoir, but so much of what I could write, I shouldn't write! It's too personal or too difficult, too painful or indescribable. Much of my life is spent alone, with only the cats to keep me company! I'm a pretty organized person, so I handle many tasks daily, communicating with or serving various causes I believe in; dropping a note on FaceBook in reaction to a friend, colleague or grandchild; planning for various things; making certain I keep up with family events. Is that enough in the big picture of life? It is what I can and should do, so maybe it is. I don't know how to change, or want to, so that's what I will continue to do.

Marvin told me last week that he didn't know what love meant until he met me. What an amazing thing to tell someone you've been married to for nearly 52 years! I think of all the pain we've shared in reaction to others and imposed upon each other. But through such events when many people would separate, we've always hung in there. It's comforting to be in the evening of your life and marriage with a person who says such things. I can only pray that all who read this blog can experience the same in their lives.

Well, this is pretty scattered today ... maybe next time I'll find a topic to stick to! Until then, I pray you, too, will do what you can and should do! Amen.

Brothers

My brother George, Marvin's best friend, died June 3. I was in Arizona on vacation, coming down with a cold when the call came at 4:30 a.m. Arizona time. He'd died at 4:30 a.m. in St. Louis. His wife Sharon called Marvin, then she called me because Marvin said I'd want to be woke up. George was the last sibling either of us had left, and the closest to my husband. 45 years of fishing trips and various adventures brought them closer together than most people have the privilege to experience. Marvin's taken the first trip to Missouri since then and he's wept over what will not be again. But while I was gone, he grieved alone. I was with family and keeping touch with George's through the next few days, so it was easier for me. We expected the death. We drove to see George the Friday before, and sat for two hours talking with him. When we left, George stood with difficulty, to reach out to Marvin for a hug goodbye. We returned to Springfield for the night to visit with Sheila and Morgan, then home on Saturday.

The Big Piney River in Missouri, so much a part of our family vacation history, brings back more memories of George than any for Marvin. Tonight he talked about many of his good times with George, the talks of family and events sad and happy. Marvin saw him through three wives, listened to his woes, and may have been the only person George fully revealed himself to. And the reverse was true. To lose a brother is one thing. To lose your confidant and friend is another.

Tonight I grieve for both of them ... maybe on the river of heaven, they'll have another float trip.

Marvin will have one more float trip with George in this life ... to scatter his ashes on the river. He'll await that call.

My own memories of George date from about age 4 when he took me on a roller coaster. When he was visiting my folks he'd take me to a cigar store in Danville to watch him play cards (Mom and Dad weren't supposed to know!). I have many stories of him with us after we married. George taught my kids how to play cards, took Art with his family to Florida on vacation, loved my kids as much as his own. He was a flawed human, as are we all. He was often irritating to be with, but never to me. He always treated me like his beloved little sister. He made mistakes that he tried to rectify before he died. I think he did a pretty good job of it. He was a better brother than I was a sister.

But Marvin was the brother he could love unconditionally, and receive love in return. They both should be honored for that bond. I do that here, this day, with these words. May all who read this do so as well.

Not just visiting

"I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility ... When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms ... I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. - Mary Oliver, from her poem "When Death Comes""

It's coming on Christmas, that wonderful time of year when light enters our lives midst the cold of winter. I'm not quite ready because my gifts, a letter to each of my children and grandchildren, are not yet written. What to say, I ask during busy days of doing the things I'm responsible for and those tasks I've taken on with that sense of call I've always had. I liked Mary Oliver's poem quote, taken from a daily missive I receive from Sojourners, a Christian website and magazine that addresses the issues of the day. Mostly I agree. Yeah, I'm a liberal Christian, believing that the congregation of God is open to all of God's created people. Those of us who've opened the door to God are given a great task, many tasks really. But all are part of the concept of amazement that Oliver wonders at, all of us are empowered to really make a difference in the world if we but step out and do it.

When I was a little girl on a small farm in east central Illinois, I often dreamed of great things ... well I thought my prince would come and take me off to the magnificent heights of a wonderful life! But when I examined the clouds while laying in the hayfield and pondering the future, I always knew I would be making a difference somewhere, sometime. Like Oliver, I don't want to be remembered as just visiting this world.

Don't confuse this with doing good as a goal for my life. God has always been there at the intersections, guiding the decisions, pushing in the right direction, helping me to see success even in failure. Perhaps that's because God doesn't measure success in the way our society does. God, after all, came to die on a cross. Just how much of a model of success could that be? Instead, doing is the calling. Visiting is not an option.

So when I write those letters, my heart will remember the poem ... and God's gift to me. I pray I can share that truth in a meaningful way. Merry Christmas!

The spirit within us

Last week I took a class on spiritual direction and, as always, learned something new. I had never thought about the difference between our spirit and our soul. I learned that spirit is the vital dynamic force of our being, given by God and that which brings our soul into living reality. And the soul is the very essence of our existence. The Biblical reference was Ps. 42:1 "As a hind (a deer) longs for the running streams, so do I long for thee, O God." God is the water of our spirit that nourishes our soul.

The longing is something that all of us feel and understand. We question the meaning of life, whether we will go to heaven, the knowledge that when we die, we do it alone, and much more about the human condition. God is the only answer to that longing. God loves every human being on earth, and gives each of us the strength to live through anything if we ask, and sometimes despite our failure to ask. When we ask for healing, God gives us a friend to talk to, or a doctor to address our physical ailments. When we ask for answers to problems, God gives us wisdom. When we are weak, God holds us. When we are fearful, God gives us courage.

The one thing God never is, is indifferent. Eli Weisel, an Auschwitz survivor and Noble Peace Prize winner, wrote in his memoir "Night": "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

To feed my soul, I must banish indifference from my spirit. A friend sent me one of those chain emails this morning, and my finger hovered over the delete button. The story was about a violinist who played in the metro station of Washington, D.C. on a cold winter day. The beautiful notes of Bach filled the air. But no one stopped to listen. A few dropped coins or bills, a total of $32. Only the children tried to stop an hear the music, until their parents dragged them on, all a rush. The musician was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world, and he was playing on a violin worth $3.5 million. Tickets to hear him were $200. The Washington Post arranged for him to play as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The writer asked what this says about us. Are we indifferent? Do we not recognize beauty or talent in an unexpected venue?

What else are we missing?

That longing I mentioned before must be how God feels too, longing for us to notice that beauty, that gift that he gives to us every day. We really don't want to miss that!

Interruptions

Stephen King and my friend Susan Albert Wittig say that a writer must write 2000 words per day. That's about 10 pages. Sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's not. Susan was interrupted with a power outage and cleanup after a storm when she was alone in her Texas hill country home. Stephen, I'm sure, finds his own interruptions ... not just the big one where he was nailed by a car on his daily walk. I, for one, am interrupted by my need to write about something significant every time I open a blog post. How silly is that? So perhaps I should talk about interruptions.

So here I am, telling the page about my days ... Monday I trusted all my most precious old photos to the post office to mail to my brother George in St. Louis. Some of his children are visiting starting today. I am so happy that is happening because those relationships were interrupted many years with conflict. Family itself can be an interruption, because as children become adults their lives are too full of other things to spend a lot of time with parents. And when family visits, routines are interrupted. So even love can be an interruption, but a happy one!

The saddest interruption in my life just now is that I have received notice that my sister Louise has Alzheimer's Disease, and has been institutionalized for two years. Louise left home when I was a toddler and has always lived in Washington state. To explain why I didn't know she was ill is somewhat embarrassing. You see, I don't like her. There's no rule someplace that says you have to like your sister. I adored the other one, Imogene, despite our differences and disagreements. Louise was so controlling and manipulative that my anger could never be appeased. Every time we have been together has been a struggle. After our last visit, taken at the behest of Marvin, I swore I would never see her again. I instead chose to think of her walking her dog every day ... and manipulating her family. Louise was 85 this year. And I sent her a birthday card. Maybe that's why her daughter Diane asked her dad, Tom, if we had been informed of Louise's demise. Diane wrote a note to me and my brother (it's a good thing we haven't moved). But Tom doesn't answer the phone. Shall I interrupt his peace with a letter? I always adored him. So I guess I will.

Interruptions should be for good reasons, but aren't always. I hope this interruption in the lives of my family who read this will offer some thought of relationships, and how they are interrupted. Instead of resenting, we should take advantage of the moment. Therein lies the rub for me with Louise. I never forgave her interruptions. And it's too late to take it back. So here I write my regret. And ask forgiveness.

The spirit speaks

It's Pentecost, and the sermon has the usual spin...the Christian Church is born under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Those early folk were accused of drinking new wine when they started spewing words in everyone's language. But, as God raised those bones to life in Ezekial, the Spirit brings to life a new language, a new people.

My first experience with the Spirit was when I was 15 or so. I had been naughty, actually quite vicious, to a girl my age named Marjie. She was cute, little and quite sweet, but for some reason or another I didn't like her and sort of plotted nastiness. (One of those mean girls, I think, but I was not a movie star!) Now I was pretty popular, involved in most everything, and had a lot of influence on my friends and others. But I was obsessed with doing evil to Marjie, until one day in the girl's restroom and Cora Lee. She was sort on the fringe of my circle of friends so had little influence on me before that day. But Cora Lee talked to me in language I could understand, "You better quit treating Marjie so mean or people won't like you anymore." My heart was opened to guilt and shame, and I changed. I later understood that day to be an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The Triune God tries to reach into our hearts each day, in every way. The Holy Spirit is the most insidious part of the three and it found the language of my heart. Now, I am embarrassed to say, Marjie doesn't even remember that I was a meanie. But I am glad I changed.

The Holy Spirit has been there at every crossroad in my life, such as sending a friend to ask me to become a correspondent for the newspaper. That led to the best job in the world, writing for a living! The Holy Spirit was there through the nudging by Marvin that we go to the Presbyterian Church a couple of miles from our new home in rural Sherrard. That life-changing moment has led to an amazing joy in serving God through the church.

There's lots more examples, but my point is that the Holy Spirit is there every day, guiding us in every way. So don't be stubborn! Just be willing to take a risk to find your way to serving God!

Motherhood

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, a time when many mothers reflect on their past as mothers. Some  of us have regrets, but those feelings are more often pushed aside by pride. As I look at my mother life, I sometimes think I shoulda, coulda, done it differently. Then I see bad mothers, and I realize that my regrets are silly. I tried to teach my children to be responsible for their decisions, and that I expected them to be good to themselves, which meant to also be thoughtful and kind to others. Whether they remember it that way or not is irrelevant to the point – I tried to teach my values, and they had the responsibility to accept that or create their own values. And they did.

I guess all of us are influenced as parents by the parents we have. I've already written that my mother totally believed in me and that helped build a self-confidence that brought me success in life. Her faith helped build my own, in a God that has given me strength in adversity and pain. Not to mention Dad whom we all adored for being so perfect that Mother could never quite match him. My kids have seen that in their parents as well, although both of us are far from perfect. We are, like our parents, human and therefore bound to make mistakes.

So what makes a perfect Mother? It's not cookies, although they are nice. It's not meeting your every need, although she will likely try. All mothers are perfect if they practice unconditional love; if they let you experiment with life; if they remember what is was like to be young and support you when your life choices are painful. Mothers' hearts weep when their toddler goes missing in the super store until the loudspeaker describes her kid at the customer service desk. Mothers weep more during junior high, when kids' hormones cause the emotional chaos of great joy and deep depression. When she has young adults, she weeps over their troubled marriages and careers. And God forbid, but if her adult child becomes ill ... the weeping must give way to great strength. Because anything else is unacceptable.

Most mothers do all this and much more, balancing careers and marriage or other relationships with aplomb. I'm proud to be a mother, and I am in awe of my daughter Sheila and my daughters-in-laws Susan and Debra as they shine the Motherhood light in their homes. I am proud they are in my life, and proud of the model they've provided my grandchildren. For the new generation, tomorrow and every day is Mother's Day, filled with unconditional love!