2014.02.16 THANK YOU

                 

                         

=     THANK YOU LOVE


Unless you’re six and perfectionistic about your large misshapen letters, then it takes a minute to write a thank-you note to your grandparents for your Christmas gift.

It takes even less than a minute for your grandparents to read your missive, and the rest of a swiftly aging lifetime to re-read it and inscribe it on their hearts.

My mother hounded me as a kid about writing my thank-you notes to my grandparents after a birthday or Christmas. I thought it was stupid, since I had already thanked them on the phone when they called.

My note was especially hard for my paternal grandparents, because, from birth to about ten, they gave me government savings bonds. When I was old enough to pick a silver pattern at Tiffany's, they gave me one piece of silverware in my pattern with my initials on each piece every birthday and every Christmas. The forks and knives came first, followed by teaspoons, soup spoons, and butter knives. 

As soon as I learned basic math, I figured out that to accumulate a whole set of 12 place settings, each set with 5 pieces of the most basic silverware @ the rate of 2 pieces a year, one for a birthday and one for Christmas, it would take over 30 years to complete my set. By then I'd be an old woman of forty; plus, the completion would happen only if my grandparents didn’t die before my set was complete, which they did.

All my careful calculations aside, I still wrote my thank-you notes every year. I never figured out ways to make my notes creative, or even enthusiastic. Thank you, I thought, didn't seem enough.

I think my parents, or an aunt, completed my set eventually, save some soup spoons and two dessert forks. After I was married I did use my good silver at holidays and to entertain, an activity I do not do well and avoided if possible.

Today my set sits in a lined silver chest where it stays more or less free of tarnish. It is beautiful. I don’t use it much any more. I’m about the age my grandparents were when they died. I hope one of my grandchildren will love and use my set.

My maternal grandmother was widowed and gave gifts that she, a prize seamstress, had made. I loved the specialized clothes she made for my favorite doll, Lucille. Those notes were easy.

One year an aunt sent each member of our family a single place mat, one of a matching set. We each had to write a note for our single mat.

Thank-you notes today from our grandchildren, sometimes two on a note, some in pencil and some boldly in ink, are more precious than a phone call or an email. I have a couple of samples.

“Dear Grampy and Grammy, Thank you soooo much for the sleeping bag. I sleep with it every night  they are so comfy. Everyone has been asking me where I got it. and also thank you sooo much for friendly’s (where we took them for ice cream).  Love   Her name in cursive.  See you soon”  Bold flower illustration in purple and signed by her two brothers, six and three, who also got bags.

“Dear grammy and grampy, I love the gift cards that you got me. I am planning to use them wisely. thank you.  love, ” Big smiley face illustration.

As they get older the notes are the same with a little more formality and content, and usually a small open circle to dot the i’s (girls). Then they include some reference to our “thoughtfulness” and maybe a sentence hoping we too had a Merry Christmas. And one teen super-shopper described the outfit she had already bought: “Thank you for the card. I bought a really cute outfit at Forever 21 that I love. Love you guys!” Some say “I love you,” and some have xxx and ooo.

They write to both of us, but Dick’s biological grandchildren put “Grampy” or “Grampy Sim” first, followed by “Grammy” or "Grammy Lyn.” My biological grandchildren put my name first. This tiny sensitivity may be on parental advice, but I don’t think so. They are all naturally good-hearted—not so easy to remain so with second marriages. I remember one of them asked, when she was about seven and trying to make sense of the family flow chart, whether her grandmother’s second husband had first been married to me, her father’s second wife?  In other words was there a swap? 

We adore every single one and all of these small and growing souls and, if all goes well, by next summer we will have our twelfth, six girls and six boys. 

We keep our thank-you notes in a basket for a long time. The children have no idea what these love- notes mean to us.

Thank + you = two words. They are as essential to the work of Godde as are the famous “three little words.”


  

2014.02.09 Gratitude

It’s a mystery that I live
on
and a blessing that I
do
for in this mysterious blessed state I
am
for no good reason at all my
self

2014.02.02 Holy Scripture: Proclamation and Story

Holy Scripture is holy precisely because we can’t pin it down to any one point of view, no matter how hard we try—and oh, we try, oh we try.  

Scripture is made up of proclamation + story. The proclamation is always the same, something like, God is still around, faithful. For Christians, the proclamation is Jesus Christ is Lord, and no other—not Caesar, not your money or possessions, not your best beloveds or your passions, not your work or works, not even your religion. 

I'd say that Christians dare to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, exactly because in that birth, life, suffering, ignominious death, and beyond, we perceive God's faithfulness and thus we have hope, no matter what.

Hope is my favorite spiritual gift and virtue.  It is vast, spread beyond what can be known, always open-ended. Hope embraces all things, all the contrasting complexities of life, all futures, and all possibilities—the holy and the unholy. Hope can see in the dark.

Biblical stories are vehicles, accompanying the singular proclamation. They tell us how real people live the proclamation out with hope. The proclamation has power, yet so also does the story itself. We often discover that our own stories find place in these ancient stories. 

Take the story in Luke’s gospel (2:22-40) about Mary, the young mother of Jesus coming to the Temple, as tradition demanded, to dedicate her firstborn son to God, in remembrance of how God  had delivered all the firstborn sons of Israel from death at the hand of King Herod. 

Envision a new young mother, probably exhausted and anxious but obedient to the demands of her religious tradition. She likely felt possessed by a love too consuming to describe, a love that made her also feel possessive. Mary, I’m sure, felt excited and nervous as she clutched her child. Probably most of us have felt such possessing/possessive love for someone or something. You could crush it with your ardor.

Enter old Simeon, a very old man, stranger to Mary. He took the baby from her arms, blessed him, and then in an aging cracking voice chanted a strange old hymn as he rocked the babe in arms.  
   
    Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for
    mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all
    people, to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
     

What was Simeon saying? He continued with a grim, fearsome prophecy: this child will open the hearts and minds of the people (a dangerous thing to do) and many will oppose him. And . . . a sword will pierce your own soul too, dear woman.

How horrifying to Mary. What does this mean? Where in this story would Mary find hope?

Perhaps in the figure of Anna. Anna, a much ignored figure in scripture and sermon, is 84. She was married and widowed after just seven years. She’d never left the Temple—60-some years of worship, prayer and fasting. That’s faith! Anna came forth after Simeon to praise God and prophesy the redemption she’d recognized in the child.  

Anna was a woman who had experienced crushing grief, yet she held onto her hope in God and God’s faithfulness. She’d survived “hell” and kept hope. Without knowing it then, Mary saw in Anna all the virtues she herself would need going forward. I think the presence of Anna brought hope into Mary’s heart.

I knew an Anna once, an old salt who had lived long by the sea; it was in her bones. She was raspy and grouchy and often preachy. She had received a mail order degree in theology from Oral Roberts University—very conservative. Like the biblical Anna, she hung out around the church most days. She took the Bible literally, every word. If it weren’t in there it simply weren’t! She and I were of different minds yet we both loved the stories, and we could chuckle together. 

One day this contrarian told me as she pounded her fist into her hand: “Ya know. I was dead set against the ordination of women.” (I braced myself.) She continued, “But I converted.” (I felt inflated, imagining myself part of her conversion.)  “Ya know what changed my mind? It was old Anna in the Temple. I read that story over and over. I thought to myself, ‘Well, if an old timer like that could come into the church and preach prophecy then I guessed it was okay for all women to speak in church.”

An old woman—a story—a light—a hope—a christ—our God.