Waiting for Word

LOVE
We all inherit something from our progenitors: insanely blue eyes like my husband's, a Romanesque nose (also like my husband's), a dashing smile, sanguine personality, hearty laugh, or broad shoulders. My brother, Rob, and I both inherited chocolate brown eyes, dark hair and prematurely degenerative lower backs.

This Advent, as I was waiting for Christmas, I was also waiting for Rob and his family to visit for the holidays. Despite a re-injury of his back - from putting his one-year-old into his crib - Rob made the long fight from LA to Chicago. On Christmas Eve he (who did not inherit the Drama Chromosome as I did) lay writhing in pain on the bed in my parent's room. The kids and I stopped the Natal Drama to go into the master, anoint Rob with olive oil and pray for a reprieve from pain that 'felt like a rusty nail stabbing his low back, hip and right leg.'

On Sunday I thought of my brother as I led worship from the piano and sang, Immanuel, Our God is with us. And if God is with us who can stand against us? Our God is with us, Immanuel. And as the congregation read the following adaptation of Eugene Peterson's translation of John 1, I thought about my friend Bev who is pregnant and four days past her due date. Both my brother and Bev: waiting for a word, waiting for deliverance from pain, waiting for a new life.

RESPONSIVE READING, DECEMBER 28th 2008

LEADER:
The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God in readiness for God from day one.

MEN:
Everything was created through him; nothing – not one thing! – came into being without him.

WOMEN:
What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.

ALL:
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. Immanuel, God with us!

LEADER:
John the Baptist was sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

WOMEN:
The Life-Light was the real thing: Every person entering Life he brings into Light.

MEN:
He was in the world, the world was there through him, and yet the world didn’t even notice he came to his own people, but they didn’t want him.

LEADER:
But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, he made to be their true selves.

ALL:
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. Immanuel, God with us!

With the coming of Christmas, my Advent waiting has ended. The Life-Light has come into the darkness. Yet, with Rob and Bev, I continue to wait as they walk through Personal Advents. Rob and his family cut their trip to Chicago short, flying back to LA on Christmas Day. As I write he is undergoing what could be a five hour surgery to alleviate two 'massively herniated' discs. Bev is still awaiting the birth of her baby boy. I remain with both of them in hope and expectancy and with this poem:

Waiting for Word
for Rob on the day of his back surgery
December 2008

On a day filled with
thoughts of you,
I feel pregnant with
expectancy, waiting for Word

by phone or Internet
or Spirit Whisper that
you’re OK and resting
in the safety of darkness

beginning to break
like waters bringing forth
new life once secreted by womb
that – by yielding, going with the pain –

fades from deepest obscurity
to a bright pink and screaming dawn

An Advent Podcast

This year my church, Blanchard Road Alliance in Wheaton, is offering a 5 minute Podcast for each day during the Advent Season. These Podcasts have given me Pause, Stillness, a few moments for Reflection during this often frenetic time of year. They've been a perfect Gift to me. I look forward to each new offering, enjoying recitations of scripture by four-year-olds, stories about forgiveness, hopeful expectation for Emmanuel - God with Us - to come.

Following is a transcript of my Podcast which is featured today at the following link: http://www.blanchardalliance.org/mediaServices/channel321.xml). If, by the way, you're interested in signing up for the free gift of the entire Podcast Compilation, you can do that at http://www.blanchardalliance.org/.

Everlasting Father
An Advent Offering about God as Playful

This morning as I got ready for the day I heard my dad’s voice calling out from our front room, “It’s time for your armpit sandwich, Ayden!” Next I heard the pitter-patter of a chase followed by a capture and shared laughter. Even from upstairs, I knew it wouldn’t be long until Grandpa and Ayden would be feverishly involved in a game of “Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?”, Flashlight Tag with Ben and Emily, or Ayden’s favorite, “I’m Thinking of Something.”

My dad is one of the most playful, ebullient, joyous, extroverted people I know. He’s one of those twinkly-eyed guys who smiles at babies in line at the mall. He embraces life, always has a good story to tell, an easy laugh, and sees the bright side of everything. Even in his sixties, my dad espouses the huge, uninhibited heart of a child.

His playful spirit has informed my image of God, our Everlasting Father. When I find myself falling into the clichéd trap of seeing God as stoic, unavailable, uuber-serious; I remember my dad. And, I realize that playfulness can be part of God’s character without diminishing his authority, divinity or holiness.

Seeing God this way – through the lens of my hilarious, playful dad – helps vivify the image of our Everlasting Father. So when I read in Psalm 104 that God ‘stretches out the heavens like a tent’ I immediately think of camping with my dad. And, imagine a god who invites us into wild adventurous kinds of connections. The kind of fresh-aired fun families experience under star-lit nights . . . by open fire.

Also, when I read of God incarnate, Jesus, inviting the children to be with Him; I see my dad tickling my son like he did earlier today. And, I imagine Christ yelling “Let the little children come,” as He takes off for an impromptu game of hide-n-go-seek that morphs into a game of leap frog and then a contest to see who can dig up the most worms from a nearby Jerusalem garden.

During Advent – a time of reflective waiting – let us trust that our Everlasting Father will come at Christmas with Joy and Lightness, Playfulness and Love . . . delighting in us and inviting us to be with Him, enjoy Him, enter into blithe and cheer-filled moments of connection with Him.

And, let us likewise invite Him:

Jesus Christ, Immanuel, Everlasting and Playful Father, in our changing world, help us trust your eternal protection and provision and guide others to You.

Expecting Emmanuel

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This Advent I’m expectant. Expectant for the birth of Christ; and expectant for the birth of a friend’s baby (a boy, due on Christmas Day). I’ve had the joy and honor of walking with this friend, a single-mom who goes to my church, through this: her first pregnancy.

As I’ve watched her middle become as round and beautiful as the earth, we’ve been talking a lot about Mary’s journey as a single-mom. We’ve debriefed what it must’ve been like for Mary to feel pregnant and alone. We’ve read her story in the gospels, imagined what it was like when her baby, Jesus, met leaping John the Baptist – through layers sin and flesh and uterus – for the first time.

We’ve talked about the surprising way Mary – an improbable teenage girl – wound up carrying God’s child . . . carrying God within herself . . . And how all of us carry divinity within us. CHRIST IN US THE HOPE OF GLORY.

The magic and mystery of God coming near in such an unlikely way has struck us organically as my friend (full and beautiful with child), nears her Christmas due date, prepares her nursery, and tries to survive these last few days where sharing a body with a big baby boy are becoming arduous and exhausting. As we wait and expect her looming day of deliverance, we’re awed at the ways Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us has come to be close to us.

A poem by Rowan Williams, titled Advent Calendar, helps us as we wait:

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-sowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Grateful Heart

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My family has just returned from a couple days away at a little cabin in the woods. We followed trail blazes on oak leaf covered paths, saw cedar waxwings, stepped on mushrooms and watched their spores ascend into the air like smoke. The kids collected sticks, rocks and feathers. I collected memories.

We performed balance beam routines on fallen pine trunks, warmed our hands and faces by Bry's fire, feasted on roasted turkey and buttered potatoes, slept under quilts; awoke to hot coffee and sunshine sneaking surreptitiously into our dwelling. Surrounded by fresh air and the love of family, I couldn't help but feel unquenchably grateful. In an endless circle, a voice deep within my spirit whispered, Thank you, God . . . Thank you, God . . . Thank you, God!

Were there no God we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank. - Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894

Sisters

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Shortly after my dear friend Margie's husband died from Cancer; I heard of a young mom at my church who had lost her sister to Cancer. Cathartically, I spent hours on her brother-in-law's gorgeously written website: http://forleslie.blogspot.com/ weeping and praying with my tears as I read stories of love and loss and unexpected leaving. So much of it reminded me of my arduous, beautiful, mercy-laden journey with Margie. So much of it made me feel connected to this young woman though I did not know her personally.

Every Sunday at church I prayed for her, wondered how she was doing - - knowing that she was in the thick grieving the loss of her sister and, at the same time, helping her brother-in-law care for his young motherless son. Every Sunday, I wondered how the woman's heart was doing, if it was empty with the aching gnaw of loss like mine. If she was exhausted or at peace or both . . . or neither. I wondered how losing a sister was different from what I experienced with Margie; and if there was anything I could do or say to lighten (or fill?) the loss. Last Sunday, in the middle of the service, a poem came. I'm not sure if I'll share it with the woman, or not. But, it follows.

Sisters

I don't have a sister.
You did.

In a picture the two of you
sit on a bench together.
You're both smiling,
looking so pretty,
mirrors of one another,
happy, sisterly: companioned.

What's it like to have a
sibling like yourself
yet different
knowing you intuitively
by shared propinquity
and life

to laugh at insider jokes,
remember the color of wallpaper
in childhood rooms and
the exact slope of backyard

the swing set there and sandbox
where you shared secrets and
fought over who'd be
Queen of the Sandcastle

to disagree and know that
blood and chromosomes link
you together inextricably like
stitches in a hand knit blanket?

Now she has left unexpectedly
and I wonder where she is.
In the ground? In the sky?
Both? Still companioning you?
Your countenance in church
says you miss her ineffably
but know exactly where she is.

I imagine her whispering the
location to you in a sunset or
falling leaf, in the simple symbol
of a dream, or shiver on the
back of your neck.

I don't have a sister.
You always will.

HOME

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"Gottcha!" That's what we we said to a twelve-month-fifteen-day-old beautiful, apple cheeked Chinese baby girl on the day we held her in our arms for the first time. The moment unfolded at a Chinese Welfare Institution in Nanchung. The room was small, unadorned, dimly lit and filled with anxious parents-to-be along with the hearty cries of our baby girl and eleven others who were united with their adoptive American mamas and daddies that day, November 20th, 2005.

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I remember holding my pearl of a baby girl on my lap as we took a bumpy bus ride back to our hotel. As the bus maneuvered scarily through frenetic Chinese traffic, I felt an overwhelming, marrow-deep homesickness. A longing to smell the hair of our boys, to hug them hard and long, to play the piano in my front room, to look at the pond from our dining room table; and, simultaneously, a homesickness for a place I've never been, a Place where my Heart will truly find Rest and Peace and Completion . . . a place where True Forever Family lives. Along with all these existential emotional gymnastics, I also felt a sadness that Bryan and I were about to take this baby girl away from the first home she'd ever known.

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Hoping to bring a part of China back to the states with us, I leaned over my seat to ask our guide, "How do you say home in Chinese?"

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"Jia," she said and smiled as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
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Jia, jia, jia, I repeated in my heart. Jia. Jia. I wanted to remember this word. I planned to say it to our child after we flew across the Big Pond, landed in the airplane, and drove via car down our driveway for the first time. Jia, I would whisper in my little girl's ear. Jia. This is your home, Sweetheart.

Today is the third anniversary of our GOTTCHA DAY (a term well-known and beloved by adoptive parents of internationally adopted children).

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Today, Emily and I will dress up for tea with hats, strings of pearls (from China), boas and sparkly plastic rings. We'll set a toddler sized table for four. Two of my grandmother's tea cups - most likely filled with apple cider - will be for us. Two others will be set out for Emily's birth parents who we call Ma Ma and Ba Ba (the Chinese names for Mom and Dad).

We will sing and talk, eat Goldfish crackers and bakery cookies. And we will sip our tea. When there is a pregnant pause in the festivities; we'll raise our cups, with extended pinkies of course, and toast to Ma Ma and Ba Ba in China. We will thank them for giving Emily life, for giving her her first home in China, for

letting her come to a new home in America.

Thoughts of China and pain bearing beauty, of Emily's birth family, of jia have been flooding my mind. I wonder if Emily is remembering, too. I wonder if this season brings up for her the memories: smells, sights, sounds, feelings of the day when her life changed and she found a new kind of home in my arms.

I wonder if she remembers that we were both wearing the exact shade of jade green when we first met. I wonder if she remembers the way the Aunties told us - using pantomimed body-language - that she could walk, that she was doing so well, that she had been deeply loved in China. I wonder if she notices the big and small synchronicities that come during this time of remembering. Synchronicities like the one last night as I read the last few pages of Madeleine L'Engle's Meet the Austins to all of my kids before bed.

On the last few pages, L'Engle artfully, specifically describes the Austin family activities upon returning home from a long vacation:

We piled out of the car and in through the garage and into the house, into the kitchen. It was home and I remembered it with every bit of me . . . We were all dashing all over the house to our special places. I ran up to Rob's and my room, and there was his little bed at the foot of my big one . . . and the catalpa tree outside the east window was still naked but I thought I could see the beginning of buds. I kept going from room to room, bumping into the others, and that's what we were all doing, feeling the feel of home again.

We all ran outdoors to the swing, to John's and Dave's tree house, John, of course, to the barn . . . We ran all the way around the house, looking at it from all four points of the compass, and then back into the house again, and Mother had a record on the phonograph, and the phone kept ringing, all the kids to ask us about our vacation, and the office phone, because Daddy's patients knew he was home again.

Rob grabbed my hand and pulled me back upstairs to our room and he said, "Oh, my bed, my own bed," and I knew his God Bless that night would go on for hours if someone didn't stop him from blessing every piece of furniture in the house and every tree outdoors.

Mother called us to help, and she was getting dinner and we realized that it was dinnertime and we were all starved, so we set the table and I mashed the potatoes and Suzy cut up the tomatoes for salad and Rob went around the table giving everyone three napkins. Then we were all around the table holding hands to say grace, and we said the kind of grace we always do on special occasions, each of us in turn saying his own . . .

Then everyone started to jabber all at once and to eat like pigs and it all seemed right and comfortable and home.

On the way to the bus stop this morning, I replayed this passage from Madeleine's book in my mind. I thought about the day we came home from China with Emily. I thought about the homes we go to each Thanksgiving and Christmas. And, I thought about a Home where I hope to live after these homes all pass away. As I thought, an acrostic for HOME popped into my head:

H - Happily ever after?
O - Ostensibly a
M - metaphor for the

E - eternal.

Once again, welcome home, Emily! This is your jia, your place of love and family and fights with siblings, mashed potatoes, loud conversations, piano music and growing trees. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're so glad that you're here! Welcome home!

Thank You Durand Women

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During this season of thanksgiving, I'd like to express gratitude to the girls of Durand United Methodist Women's Organization. Thank you for sharing your weekend of retreat with me. Your laughter and tears and the helpful suggestions you offered about my ensuing mammogram are ineffably appreciated! Thanks for inspiring me with your Babyless Shower, your 'We're Not Church Ladies Attitude,' and your open conversational honesty.

Now that I know you all a bit better, I can honestly say that I'm proud you've taken the moniker Girl Talk . . . God Talk for your group. May all of your talkings continue!

As I was driving home from Rockford, I was thinking about a comment a woman in your group made that one of my books was normal. In the moment, I was a bit taken back. But, as I processed in my car on the way home, I wondered if that may have been the most profound compliment anyone has ever given me about my writing; and proof that my mission of bringing the divine to the daily, the holy to the human - - meeting God in the ordinary - - is being accomplished. So, thanks for those sweet words.

My prayer for all of you is that you'll continue to grow in faith and friendship. And, as you do, that that you'll continue to reach out to your community and to the world. (Also, that you'll hang in there with Lewis' Four Loves.) That books is one of my favorites. My husband, Bryan, and I used the following quote from that masterpiece in our wedding program:
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Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - - if possible, wealth; Appreciative-love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all. Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative-love says: "We give thanks thee for thy great glory."
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So, here I am, blogging and sending a big dose of Appreciative-love your way. Thanks again! And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and yours!

ColorGirl

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ColorGirl
a poem about Kristin

Canary yellow it cascades
from branch, brushing
coat sleeve, jeans
taking rest in a bed
of sunshine colored comrades

I begin to gather more:
a golden bouquet

walking through the park
add orange, crimson, rusty
garments disrobed by fall

At home the collection
perfectly piles into
cardboard box addressed
to brother in LA where
leaves hold eternally verdant

The face of his wife
falls into mind I see
her before him on
hills peaking in
vibrant autumnal bursts
they glide in joy
and wind and smeary hues

I lift the box letting my
collection spill on dining
room table – he does not need
the ritual package anymore

She is the color in his life

Looking for God

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They watch for Christ

who have a sensitive, eager, apprehensive mind,

who are awake, alive, quick-sighted,

zealous in seeking and honoring Him,

who look out for HIm in all that happens, and

who would not be surprised,

who would not be over-agitated or overwhelmed,

if they found that He was coming at once . . .

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This then is to watch;

to be detached from what is present, and

to live in what is unseen;

to live in the thought of Christ as He came once,

and as He will come again;

to desire His second coming, from our affectionate

and grateful remembrance of His first.

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John Henry Newman

Admonition to Eyes

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It is Sunday, and another poem has come. This one is written like a letter to my eyes, begging them to open, to see God's grandeur in nature, the struggle of a close friend, the newly born-handwriting of my elementary aged boys, the smile of my daughter . . .

The poem is my way of continuing the thoughts of one of my friends at the end of his sermon, ". . . let us ask that we be granted the eyes to see those things that are needful for us in our spiritual pilgrimage. Perhaps that idea can introduce the fear that we could go way overboard on seeing the unseen . . . and yet, at special times . . . of danger, of discouragement, God may open our eyes to see things that are not unreal, but simply not regularly visible. Simply knowing that that reality is there may serve to build our faith."


Admonition to Eyes

Open to see the sun whitening,
illuminating tufted tips
of tall grass that
wave in autumn wind

the downward slope of
eyebrows mid-sentence,
fall of countenance,
crinkle of brow begging
help with kids while
a loved one convalesces
close to Heaven

See sea glass vibrant and pastel,
Study microscopic and particulate
the vast and collective
blurry humming birds, stars, silvery
moons, smears of constellation,
rosebuds or full labyrinths of bloom

Notice each lighted moment
the wobble of new cursive, her
exact slant of smile, leaves of
particular crimson or ochre,
infinitely unique geometries of
snowflakes, each metaphor in life

Practice opening widely, precisely with
cunningly careful voraciousness
Look for the Image of the Invisible, the
Mystery of divinity, the fuzzy feathery
promise found in the fluttering tips
of seeable, unseen angel wings

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17

The Labyrinth at St. James Cathedral

Last Thursday my daughter, Emily, and I made pilgrimage into the city in search of the outdoor labyrinth at St. James Cathedral on Huron. The weather was sunny and cool. Emily and I both wore brown boots (good for kickin' up crap on the walk). Once we'd paid way too much for parking we walked three blocks to the site. The laybrynth was not too large, making the turns feel a bit tight; painted with purple paint on a concrete courtyard. Two sculptures greeted us. One, an angel with a bow and arrow at his feet, the other a bright, red, angular and modern piece. We were surround by the sounds of the city: car horns, people walking, talking, the occasional screech of wheels. Two pigeons joined us in the courtyard along with two janitors and the chapel provost. Afterward, the following poem was born.

1968 Cornerstone










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she walks a circuitous path
wondering if you see and know
the twists and turns

do the disappointments go
unnoticed, fleeting and faded as
days ripped off a calendar and
tossed in a metal basket

she goes to the labyrinth
at St. James in Chicago
surrounded by hundreds of
high rise details hidden
corporately, blurred behind
blinded beehive windows

two pigeons, one white and tan,
the other iridescent gray
along with her daughter
walk with her
circling, stepping unsure
there is cooing and racing
a song of sorts, laughter,
a gentle smile to
accompany the questions

with camera lifted validating
the moment, marking it Real
out of a corner of eye, corner of frame
appears the church’s cornerstone stamped
1968, the year of her birth and
she knows you number her days

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Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
Isaiah 46:3-4

LESSONS FROM THE LABYRINTH

Slovitur ambulando . . . it is solved by walking. - Saint Augustine














THE LABYRINTH

The word labyrinth has always appealed to me as a woman and a writer. It is ripe with connotations of circuitous paths, journeys, a patterned purpose, beauty and mystery found along the way. When I think of labyrinths, I think less of English gardens, the pageantry of medieval times, centaurs, and mazes; and more about images of roundness, patterned purpose, a natural, organic, even mystic way of knowing the numinous. Before I started reading about labyrinths, taking sojourns to find them, walking them as prayer; in a deeply intuitive way, I knew they were places - like other Thin Spots - where heaven touches earth.

Until this spring I'd never walked a labyrinth. I'd just dreamt of them, seen them in books, imagined their round allure, felt drawn to their mysterious yet predictable patterns. In June after losing a friend to Cancer, a book to unexpected and radical publisher cuts, and having to reschedule a long awaited bash with my closest girlfriends in honor of my 40th birthday; a labyrinth in Canada found me. It soothed me during my time of loss, welcomed me to Middle Life, and began reigniting my creativity.















PATH TO THE LABYRINTH

My path to the labyrinth was casual, organically daily, delightfully unexpected. Early in May, I was chatting with one of my neighbors who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Checking in to see how she was feeling, I stood at the end of her driveway.

"What'd ya do today?" I kicked a rock in the boulevard.

"I walked the labyrinth at Olcott," she said with a slightly detached nonchalance.

"Labyrinth?" I asked, my eyebrows raised, the word almost cartwheeling on my tongue. "What labyrinth? Where?"

My neighbor stooped down, weeded a Dandelion from her lawn. "The Labyrinth at Olcott. It's just a couple blocks from here." She threw the weed beside her mailbox.

For the next few days it was as if the labyrinth whispered to me. She felt alive and near, beckoning. Calling to me. Welcoming.

She asked me to come and slow down, to come and cry, to come and find answers to my questions. She whispered words of wonder and womb, of a prayer one could walk. Her siren songs were tantalizing. They promised, "Come, be redirected. Let me ignite new energy in you for living a full, creative life. Let me help you meet the challenges you are about to face and find ways of serving Christ with a fresh joy, peace and wisdom." At the time, I couldn't have put exact words to her beckonings. But, they were there - in my soul - deeply imprinted like the ancient black and white picture of my great great grandmother that hangs in my family room.


MY FIRST LABYRINTH WALK

On Friday, May 9th I dropped my three-year-old daughter, Emily, off at preschool. Typically I would head straight home and use the two precious kid-free hours to write. This particular day was glorious with blue sky, vernal green grass and a breeze that carried the voice of the labyrinth directly to my ear. Her words tempted me to forget about my deadline for one morning and go on an adventure.

I tried to remember exactly where my neighbor said the labyrinth was. East on Geneva, take left before you get to Main Street . . . Once I was in the general vicinity, I followed arrowed signs and turns on a one lane road until I came to a garden and acres of wide open space encircled by mature trees. In the distance I could see a covered sign, a bench, and what appeared to be the labyrinth. I inhaled deeply. My ankles got wet by dewy grass as I walked. The journey to the labyrinth is a pilgrimage in its own right, I thought.

At the top of a small hill, she sat furrowed and friendly. She was perfectly round, a series of seven twisting concentric circles made with pale red pavers nested amidst a bed of colorful polished stones. She wasn't exactly what I'd expected. I had hoped for a glorious eleven circuit medieval labyrinth, maybe gardenesque with perhaps a row or two of boxhedge and greenery. Instead, this one was small and humble, a seven circuit Cretan (I would later discover). Standing in the middle of the wide open space I felt a little self-conscious. Industrial sized lawn mowers buzzed by, bringing an everyday hum that calmed me. I read the sign:

A labyrinth is a complex and circuitous path that leads from a beginning point to a center. Labyrinth patterns are universal, being found as archaic petroglyphs, Amerindian basket-weaving designs, and paintings or drawings from all over the world . . . In the Christian Middle Ages, labyrinths were often formed with colored paving stones in the floors of cathedral naves. Later, labyrinths were sometimes constructed of turf, herbaceous borders, or hedges . . .

The labyrinth at Olcott is a meandering pattern of the seven-circuit Cretan type, with its path marked by circular stepping stones in a field of pebbles. You walk it by entering from the northwest . . . and following the path to the center, where you may wish to pause for a few moments. Then reverse your direction and retrace your path back out to the starting point.

As you enter the labyrinth, you may focus your thoughts on a question or concern. You may walk the labyrinth with a quiet mind, sensing without particularizing the wonder of the pattern . . . In the labyrinth, as in life, there is no single right way to follow the path.

I stood at the mouth of the labyrinth feeling tempted to count the pavers. That would be so Modern, I thought. Ignoring the shame of my fall from postmodernity, I honored the urge to count the labyrinth's stepping stones, figure out her pattern. As I stepped into the mouth of the circle and continued on the path I counted stepping stones, "One, two, three, four . . . It was difficult to count and balance and follow the twisting path. I almost fell off the stones a couple times and had to remind myself, "there is no single right way to follow the path."

On the thirty-ninth stone, I considered my age, my quickly approaching June birthday, the step I was about to take into Middle Life. Thank you Lord for my life. Thank you for my thirty-nine years and the ways you've guided my feet as I've walked them. I looked at the cloudless almost periwinkle sky. I noticed a couple of cardinals in a particularly tall pine. Then stepped to the fortieth stone. I know you will be with me as I walk this year.

A picture of my Aunt Patty's face popped into my mind as I counted the steps between thirty-nine and sixty-nine - the distance between us in years. I prayed for Patty, who was recently diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. As I stepped on the the sixty-ninth stone I paused and asked God to grant my aunt's wish to live to see her seventieth birthday. Lawnmowers buzzed a song into the breeze as I stepped onto the seventieth stone, expectant and hopeful.

As I traversed to the middle of the labyrinth on my virgin walk, I started thinking about writing about the experience. I pushed the thoughts away hoping to take in the sensate experience fully, purely: stones on my bare feet, a path to follow, a middle in which to rest, a rejuvenated way back into my daily life. As I wound my way out of the sacred circle I felt thankful at the new discovery and hungry to walk, learn, know, experience more.


INVITING OTHERS TO THE LABYRINTH

When I picked Emily up from preschool, I couldn't wait to bring her to my new place of play and prayer. "Wanna go to a special place before we go home?" I asked her.

"What special place?" she asked.

"A labyrinth," I said enjoying the sound of the word and the way it felt as it rolled off my tongue.

She looked out the window watching trees blur green and gold. Cocking her head to one side and eyeing me in the rear view mirror, "What's a labyrinth, Mama?"

"A labyrinth is a curly (though my daughter is quite verbal, I didn't think she was ready for circuitous) path that helps us find our way."

"Let's go!" she said without a moment's jerk of hesitation.

Emily ran the Labyrinth as Olcott with lithe, smooth, energetic steps. She raced it, really. I walked, smiling gently as our paths crossed and we occasionally bumped into each other. (Such a metaphor for trying to lead a contemplative life as the mother of young children. Interruptions always. How will I learn to embrace them? I wondered.) We ran back to the car, holding hands, refreshed, joyful. I think we may have even skipped.

Later that night on our way out to grab a pizza, Emily and I introduced the labyrinth to her brothers, Ben and Ayden, and to Bryan, my husband. We walked the circles as a family. The boys raced like Emily had earlier that afternoon. Bry slowed down for the first time in weeks. Again the contrast: parents needing repose, children needing to burn energy. We all breathed in fresh air, noticed sky and birds and the beating of our hearts: a family, together, praying with moving feet.


A SEARCH FOR MORE LABYRINTHS

Once I had walked my first labyrinth and introduced it to my family; I was hungry to find out more about this mysterious, sacred, seemingly lost spiritual helpmate. Serendipitously, I discovered the Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress' WALKING A SACRED PATH: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice. And, along with that, her organization, Veriditas, which (among other things) offers a World-Wide Labyrinth Locator. Check it out at http://www.veriditas.labyrinthsociety.org/.

On Father's Day, using the Labyrinth Locator, my family and I found an 11 circuit, Medieval Chartres replica at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital on Roosevelt Road in Wheaton.

When I look at a medieval eleven circuit labyrinth with its eleven concentric circles and six-petaled rose in the middle; the soil of my mind fills with virescent seedling images pushing up concepts that seem to be missing in the modern church. Images of the feminine side of God, a place of nurturing and grace, of healing and hope. A place where the people and problems of earth can swish around in divine amniotic fluid, in God's womb.

This year, the fortieth in my circuitous life-journey, I hope to make pilgrimage to local (and some out-of-state) labyrinths. I'll go to Minnesota and walk a labyrinth in an arboretum with Cheri, to Dallas and sojourn to a church labyrinth with Jules. I hope to visit San Francisco with my husband Bry, brother Rob, and his wife Kristin, where I imagine Kristin and I in gowns, Bry and Rob in tuxes walking the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. Someday, perhaps on my fiftieth birthday, I'll make it to the oldest existing church labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France. Please, come, walk with me. If you do, don't hesitate to write with stories of discovery as the labyrinth helps you rediscover the depths of your soul.

The labyrinth is an archetype of wholeness, a sacred place that helps us rediscover the depths of our souls so we can remember who we are.
- Lauren Artress, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice.

Labyrinths can help us to redirect and ignite new energies for living full, creative lives. They can help us meet the challenge to find ways to be of service to something greater than ourselves. - Lauren Artress

Burning Bushes

love
O.K. I admit it. I wrote the bulk of this poem during church this morning. Some of it has been brewing in me for a few months - really for a lifetime - and some of it emerged, unapolagetically, right between the sermon (sorry Jeff) and the postlude. Parts of the thing are autobiographical. Some are not; and I'll never tell which are which.

I know, on the surface, the piece may sound a bit sacrilegious. That's not the point at all, though. The poem is meant to be about standing at the burning bushes of our lives and becoming real, albeit bruised, human beings. And, subtopically, it's about Christ's willingness to put on skin, walk the earth, become an everyday humble hurting one of us.

Enough explaining . . . here's the piece.


Burning Bushes

I am the ancient gray-haired woman pushing
love one plastic bag of groceries in a Jewel cart
love with errant, shaky, stubborn-minded wheel
love down the cracked sidewalk

I am the grade school child
love duped by nasty neighborhood girls
love to stick a soft warm tongue on the
love swing set's metal bar in winter
love stuck in frozen trickery
love then ripping, blood dripping
love running up the hill to Mother

I am the middle-aged wife
love longing for a child as the moon
love cycles and blood smeared Kotex
love marks another month of cramps
love instead of kicks in a dark, empty
love God-forsaken womb

I am the sixteen-year-old
love smitten by a blond piano playing
love older man, starving for glances, calls,
love and affirmations, "Hey, You!"
love melting beneath the warmth and weight
love of his arm rounding slender shoulders
love believing, "This is the girl
love I'm going to marry," to his friends
love until I see him holding a red purse
love in the vacuous, vaulted, vibrating
love church lobby while he waits for her

I am the fifty-year-old writer
love butt in chair, hands on keyboard
love (Carpal Tunnel and achy back from
love birthing both babies and books)
love head stuck somewhere between
love fledgling family, years of writing,
love research, love-making, rejections and
love crashed book contracts listening for
love a literary lineage that, like the last note
love of a wordy opus, is fading into silence

love If anyone asks what my name is, tell them,
I AM


Exodus 3:1-15

Divine Acrostics

love
Today was rainy day. A rainy Monday. Last night I returned home from a visit to see my dear friend, Cheri, in Minnesota; the rain perfectly accompanied my lonely, after-visit malaise. I don't know if it was the rain or the melancholy that precipitated a burst of creativity. Either way, I found myself playing around with poetry, ordering some Luci Shaw collections that I've longed for forever, pulling out my poetry journal and pen. By the fire I jotted down a couple clerihews. In the kitchen, while making my kids' lunches, I toyed around with a tongue twister. In a blurry-brained moment after an afternoon nap, I imagined a few acrostics using words like, YAWN, SECRET, SMILE and CANDLE.

In the shower an acrostic for GOD popped, unwelcome, into my mind:

Grandiose

Omnipotent

Damning


Ouch! I hated the creation. It felt like a thief in the night coming quickly, surreptitiously, rapaciously. It bummed me out to think that those were my first three word associations for God. I tried to erase them, replacing them with:



Gracious

Omnipresent

Delighting

love

love

Faithful

Achingly true

Troubling

Hope-espousing

Eternal god

Relentless



and



Munificent

Other-worldly, yet in the world

Trustworthy

Holy

Eminently beautiful

Radical


Still, the first three words (and some of the others) tormented me. As I walked to the bus stop, sharing an umbrella with my daughter, Emily; I wondered if my sadness today has less to do with missing my friend and more to do with the way I'm presently perceiving divinity.

I wondered if middle life - with all of its pains, disappointments, eye-opening and unavoidable troubles - I'm revisiting some of the destructive descriptors of God that I learned in CCD as a child. I wondered if now, as I'm redefining who I am as a woman, if it is going to involve redefining, re-imaging, meeting anew the god I thought I'd known for so long.

Lately I've been thinking about another divinely definitive piece of 'poetry' titled Footprints in the Sand. Many of us are familiar with its saccharine free verse using the metaphor of two sets of prints on a wet sandy shore: one set belongs to the Divine, the other to the reader. During difficult times on the walk of life, only one set of prints is visible because it is then that God carried the one in need.

Is this the way it really works? When times get rough does God carry us? It hasn't always felt that way to me. Even though I believe God is always with me, loving, caring, walking beside, before and behind; this carrying business seems a bit dubious. Its validity hangs in the balance when I view it in lite of the most painful times in my life and the most painful times in lives of others close to me. Today I found myself wondering if Christ felt carried as he died on the cross crying out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The other day I was watching my new favorite movie, THEN SHE FOUND ME, which features a different explanation of how God works in the world. Somehow it rings truer to me than the footprints. Quoting from the end of the movie:

There is a Jewish story - - an ordinary Jewish joke. A father was teaching his little son to be less afraid, to have more courage.

"Jump," he said, "and I'll catch you."

And the little boy trusted him; and the little boy jumped. And when his father caught him he felt filled with love. And when he didn't, he was filled with something else, something . . . more: Life. Amen.

Maybe we receive more from God when he doesn't catch or carry us. Maybe he's not a coddling parent; but, one who challenges us into courage and a rich life. What do you believe? If you have time, take a moment to write an acrostic for GOD or DIVINITY, FATHER, JESUS or LORD. What are the first words that pop into your mind? Do they surprise, comfort, cajole, or bless you? How? Feel free to share what you've written; and - with your permission - I'll post your poem.

Faith-filled Friends

Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have
chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'You
have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.'

-C.S. Lewis

Life's Harvest

When I stand before God at the end of my life
I would hope that I would have not a single bit
of talent left; and I could say, "I used everything
you gave me."

-Erma Bombeck

Resurrection Hopes

The day before he died we ate ice cream for lunch and listened to Bach's Magnificat. He knew infinitely more about music, gourmet food and faith than I ever will. I wanted to learn from him; to know him better, journey with him as he raised two children with his wife, my friend, Margie. Metastasized brain cancer slaked my hopes.

A few days before, as I sat in my wide windowed writing room deliberating over the last lines in my most recent creative nonfiction manuscript, my editor called.

"Just typing the last few lines," I said, proud as a mother hen who has just heard chicks beginning to vigorously peck at translucent vernal shells. "How was your trip to New York?" I asked eagerly awaiting news of a cover design or editorial directives.

"Sally," his voice fell flat on the phone line. "We're not going to continue with your book."

In an instant a year's worth of intense research, disciplined writing, rewriting and dreams ripped out of my soul in slow motion, arched and flew across my desk. Along with my heart, it landed hard and mortally wounded like a crunched, crinkled, worthless first draft at the bottom of my recycling bin.

Cuts that affected hundreds of other writers killed my book. Cancer killed my friend's husband. For a year I had prayed for hope and healing and health. For nine months I had carried the weight of words hoping they'd come wailing into the world; but they were stilted, stillborn. I had thought June would be a month of celebration: a birthday cake with 40 candles on it for me, Cancer in remission, a book on its way to the press, a gathering of my closest girlfriends to celebrate. Instead, the girls came to Illinois for a funeral; and I cried through most of the summer.

After weeping about it all with one of my friends from church, he e-mailed:

I knew you and Bry had a great burden to bear with John's death, but I didn't know about the mortal blow to your book. Sometimes our dreams have to die so they can experience a resurrection and glory that we cannot imagine. I pray that for you.

Lately, I've been waiting, trying to rest, asking God for unlikely liveliness to spring from dark dead places, beauty to rise out of ashes, crinkly wet wings to come from the quiet chrysalis of waiting. I've been begging for resurrection in my life and my friend's. Some days I'm ready to give up, get back in bed; or I'm so pissed off that I blast unsuspecting innocents with pent up anger that I ought to share with God alone. Other days a gracious gift of gratitude washes over me like a lemonade rain falling in certain select grassy spots on a sunny day.

It is a rare gratitude that my personal death has happened to coincide with my friend's most devastating time of loss. A gratitude that my little piece of present pain somehow helps me see her a bit more clearly, love her with a gentler more organic kind of empathy; and prompts me to open arms wide and hold a sacred space where - together - we weep and know that emptiness is the best invitation anyone can give to God or each other.

Emptiness is the place where life and love can begin. Would it be too cliché to mention that the image of an empty tomb keeps coming to mind? Margie is opening herself up to the empty place of mourning in dozens of creative ways. In my own ways, I guess I'm joining her. As she mourns the loss of her man, I'm giving myself a break from writing and striving and trying to pound out a career path. Instead, I'm coloring and scribbling prayers in a sketchbook. It's funny how many circuitous paths, seeds, butterfly wings and tiny green leaves are popping up on the stark white watermarked pages.

The only thing I've been able to write since the deaths is the following Reader's Theater titled, Three New Lives. It's based on my obsession with resurrection these days and the lives of my son, Mary Magdalene and Jonah (three of my favorite people who know, first-hand, of life after death). My family read the piece for a hillside service at our church family camp in July. It makes me think of Margie's husband. It makes me think of my book. It makes me think of anyone who may be going through a season of goodbye, or dashed hope, or a path unexpectedly turned in on itself. I paste it here for you. And, I also offer it to any church that may want to use the reading, perhaps during Lent this year, as a piece of companionship for the lonley times of waiting.

May God be doing enlivening work in all of us as we wait and hope and cry and long with patience, buoyed by the memories of resurrections unearthed in own lives and in the lives of our friends.

THREE NEW LIVES

A Readers' Theatre telling Three Parallel Resurrection Stories

love

for

Two Adults, One Child and A Chorus of Two or More

The setting is a black backdrop or empty stage. The readers stand in a line wearing simple, everyday clothes such as jeans and T-shirts. The chorus may stand off to one side, but close to the main readers. The man may hold a walking stick or wear a large scarf suggesting a tunic. The woman may wear a shawl around her shoulders. The boy may have a bug box in his hand or on the ground beside his feet.

The time is kairos not chronos as the Man is an Old Testament character, the Woman is a New Testament character; and the Boy exists in modern times.

Props: a large scarf, a shawl, a bug box (These props are not quintessentially necessary.)

Multimedia: If multimedia is available, pictures of Christ’s resurrection, and the metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis and then butterfly would perfectly compliment the text.

MAN, WOMAN, BOY (ALL) and CHORUS: ONCE UPON A TIME . . .

MAN: God asked me to go to Nineveh.

ALL and CHORUS: ONCE UPON A TIME . . .

WOMAN: God gave me the best friend I’ve ever had, an unlikely guy from Nazareth.

ALL and CHORUS: ONCE UPON A TIME . . .

BOY: I was playing at the pond when I saw a caterpillar. He had black, white and yellow stripes. He was sitting on a huge Milkweed. I picked the weed, stuck it between my bike’s handle bars and gave the little guy the ride of his life!

ALL and CHORUS: THE RIDE OF HIS LIFE!

MAN: I sat under my favorite tree and told God I was sick of my life . . . sick and tired of being a prophet. (Looking up toward Heaven) You say you’re giving me the ride of my life . . .

ALL and CHORUS: THE RIDE OF HIS LIFE! THE RIDE OF HIS LIFE!

MAN: But, this life is for the birds! Come to think of it . . . the birds have it better than me! Ever since I started doing your crazy work people have been treating me like a leper. Everybody in the village points at me. Sometimes I even hear them whispering things like, doomsday . . . repent . . . evil-doers . . . wickedness . . .helter-skelter . . . I’m sick of this, God! Everyone thinks I’m nuts. Even my closest friends don’t want anything to do with me.

WOMAN: My friend was the kind of guy who would stick by you . . . even when times were tough. Right before I met him I was going through a really hard season . . . probably the worst time in my life. It got so bad I literally thought I was losing my mind . . . going nuts! I was feeling divided, depressed, hearing voices . . . lots of voices . . . most days I didn’t even want to get out of bed.

BOY: Right by my bed. That was the perfect place for the caterpillar. When I got home, I stuck the guy in a huge jar . . . stuck the milkweed in there, too . . . and set it right by my bed. That way I could keep a good eye on Fred. Fred. That’s what I named him. Seems like a good name for a caterpillar. Don’t ya think? I wanted to be able to call him by name.

ALL and CHORUS: CALL HIM BY NAME. CALL HIM BY NAME.

WOMAN: I loved it when my friend called me by name. “Mary, come sit by me. Mary, let me tell you a story . . . Mary, wanna hear a joke? . . . Remember the time James and John were fishing and . . . Mary, I love you.”

MAN: Whenever God calls my name, I freak out. “Right at JO, I want to take off running. But, his voice is loud and strong – a commanding parental kind of voice sometimes. “JONAH!” he bellows. And, I have no choice but to listen (at least for a while).

THE BOY: From my bed I watch Fred. “Fred,” I whisper. “How are ya doing?” Yesterday Fred ate three leaves; so I decided to go back to the pond to get him more. The little guy – who isn’t so little any more – seems to be really hungry.

ALL and CHORUS: REALLY HUNGRY. REALLY HUNGRY!

WOMAN: I was really hungry one night during my difficult season. So, my friend built a big fire, smoked some fresh fish and offered it to me. I woofed it down. He sat next to me by the raging fire until the summer sky was laden with stars and the bonfire burnt to ashen embers. He listened to me, really listened. When my stories were done, I cried on his shoulder for over an hour . . . Then, he prayed for me. It wasn’t one of those rote, memorized prayers like you hear at synagogue. It was more like he was just talking to God.

ALL and CHORUS: TALKING TO GOD. TALKING TO GOD.

MAN: I’m sick and tired of talking to God telling him that I don’t want to go to Nineveh! I hate being the guy who curses and convicts . . . the guy who spouts off about wickedness and wrongdoing. I’d rather talk about grace and be the bearer of a little good news. (Looking up) Don’t ya think it’s about time that you have a little good news for your people?

ALL and CHORUS: A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. A LITTLE GOOD NEWS.

WOMAN: The good news was that after he prayed for me, I was O.K. For the first time in years, my steps felt a little lighter. Then the unexpected bad news came like a punch in the gut . . . taking my breath away and choking my good news . . .

BOY: The good news was that Fred ate the new leaves I brought him. The bad news is that he seems sick. Last night he stuck his tail to a branch of the Milkweed and hung upside down – in the shape of a J – for a whole hour. When I woke up the next morning, he hadn’t moved at all.

ALL & CHORUS: HADN’T MOVED AT ALL. HADN’T MOVED AT ALL.

MAN: God didn’t budge in his desire for me to go to Nineveh and tell them that The Almighty had seen their wickedness. So I ran. As fast as I could . . . I ran away. At the time it seemed like a reasonable notion that I’d be able to run away from God . . . at least until the storm came. You see, I had boarded a boat, paid for my ticket and fell asleep below deck . . .

WOMAN: I was sleeping when Peter told me the bad news. My friend had been arrested . . . under some bizarre, manipulative accusations. He was going to trial, and possibly to his death.

BOY: I stared at Fred. For a few days he looked like he was dead. Out-of-the-blue he started wiggling. He wiggled and wiggled and wiggled, kinda dancing ‘til his skin and head popped off and fell into the jar holding his Milkweed.

MAN: Suddenly, out-of-the-blue, the ship was being violently tossed by the furious storm. Nausea, dizziness and fear made me feel as if my outsides were in and my insides were out. Before I knew it, men from the deck were tossing me into a furious raging tsunami of waves.

WOMAN: I felt undone, as if I would vomit my entire soul. I was scared of what might happen to my friend.

ALL & CHORUS: WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN? WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN? WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN?

WOMAN: A group of women and I followed him from Galilee. We walked along the dusty path in the footprints made by his sandaled feet and told stories: how we’d seen him cast out demons, heal the blind, play with the children, comfort widows, fish like he had command of the sea.

CHORUS and ALL: COMMAND OF THE SEA. COMMAND OF THE SEA.

MAN: I knew God could command the sea. I also knew he was ticked at me, so I wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing when a colossal fish swam toward me, opened his stinky mouth and swallowed me whole. Hours later, I was still inside, covered in seaweed and delusional. My prayers started morphing into poems:

I’m praying this prayer from
Inside of a fish,
And it really stinks in here.
So excuse me for breathing from only my mouth
My nose is filled with fear
Of catching a whiff of half digested clams
And snails and disgusting kelp

The best I can do from inside of this beast,
Is pray something simple like: HELP!

CHORUS and ALL: HELP! HELP! HELP US, LORD!

BOY: Help Fred, God! It looks like Fred is dead. His stripes are gone. His head is gone. He looks more like a leaf. I thought about tossing him into the trash. But, my mom said, “Wait three more days, Honey. I think Fred’s resting in there.”

WOMAN: My friend had been dead for three days . . . after they had crowned his head with a circlet of thorns, took him to the top of a hill, and laying him on a cross . . . pounded nails into his hands and feet. When I watched him take his last belabored breath, I bowed my head and tried to pray like he’d taught me. The only words that came to my heart were simply, “Father, help!”

MAN: Help me! Help me! I’m gonna die of seasickness or stench! When are ya gonna help me get me out of here?! It feels as if I’ve been in here for at least three days, God!

ALL and CHORUS: THREE DAYS. THREE DAYS. THREE DAYS.

WOMAN: On the third day, I went to my friend’s tomb with spices to embalm his body.

BOY: Three days later Fred started to turn dark purple. He didn’t look like himself at all. I started to worry that he was getting sicker!

WOMAN: I looked inside the tomb. My friend’s body wasn’t there.

MAN: Before I could get a grip what was happening to me, it felt like the great beast was breaching out of the water. We soared in the sky for over ten seconds. Just as the megalithic fish descended, I felt his stomach muscles contract around me (almost squishing me to death). The force of it all catapulted me like a human javelin down the fish’s trachea, out his gargantuan mouth and onto a sandy shore. The thing puked me up onto the beach.

I was vomited!

Sand stuck to my hands, my legs, my hair. I didn’t care. I kissed the sand. I noticed the way it stuck to my lips. I kinda liked it, but just as I rubbed it off a little, I caught a glimpse of the creature’s mast of a tail disappearing into the deep . . . . I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I felt as if I’d been given a brand new life, a second chance, and began crying at the sure joy of it all

ALL and CHOURS: BEGAN CRYING. BEGAN CRYING.

WOMAN: I began to cry.

BOY: I didn’t mean to, but I started crying. It looked like Fred was dying.

WOMAN: That’s when I heard a stranger call my name, “Mary, why are you crying?”
They have taken my friend away, I said. When I looked the stranger, I realized it was the one for whom I looked. I ran to hug him.

BOY: I couldn’t believe my eyes. Fred was changing! He was alive!!! And, suddenly, he had wings! Orange, black and white wings! At first they were wet and crinkly. After an hour or so, they were dried. Fred flew! He flew over and landed right on my shoulder!

WOMAN: My friend was no longer dead! I couldn’t believe it, just as he had given me a brand new start . . . now he had a brand new life! It was a miracle! Mere days before – with my very own eyes - I’d seen him die on a hill . . . now he lived and breathed! He called my name!
After seeing him by the grave, he met others on the road as they walked to Emmaus. And he met me by the sea . . . cooked my favorite meal of fresh fish over an open fire. I’ve never been happier than the night we sat together – by roaring flames – ate and thanked God on the beach.

MAN: On the beach, I heard God’s voice a second time. “Go to Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” I got up, brushed myself off and did as God asked. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at what the god – who made the Great Monster Fish vomit me up – did next. He had compassion on Nineveh! Instead of killing them all; he let them off the hook. He gave them a fresh start . . . just like he’d given me.

BOY: In some kind of crazy way, Fred seemed to have gotten a fresh start
. . . new wings! Slowly I walked toward the window with him on my shoulder. I opened the window wide and watched Fred fly into his brand new life!

ALL and CHORUS: BRAND NEW LIFE! BRAND NEW LIFE! BRAND NEW LIFE!