happy birthday

Birthday 48: The Beat Goes On.

When It comes to one's birthday, it isn't a bad thing to look at the events and memories of that life. This year my thoughts were not recorded in the bathtub as they were last year. A little more thought went into them. As I said last year, my friend Doug used to say, “birthdays are a luxury that not everyone can afford.” If you think about it, he was right, then I think about the joy that will follow my very last birthday.

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  When my biography is written, it will not begin, “it was a dark and stormy night...” My youngest sister's story will begin that way though.
  
• Since last year's list, (See August Archive, 2007) I have added the faith tradition of the Episcopal Church to my list of affiliations.
  
• I have smelled the essence of vinegar as the altar was being washed on Good Friday.
  
• I have installed a digital TV converter with the help of four people on two continents.
  
• In the past year I have sat at a table in a pizza parlor in Evansville where the people around it were named, Don, Don, Don and John. John did not feel left out, by the way.
  
• I tasted anchovies on pizza for the first time that evening, they're okay.
  
• I have crossed the Golden Gate, San Francisco Bay, Washington Street, John F. Kennedy, and Stot's Creek Bridges, though not on the same day.
  
• I have never seen an OBGYN professionally.
  
• I still have the brackets and wires from my orthodontics. I paid for them, they are mine and the Orthodontist gave them to me as a joke for what I gladly paid for my smile. I didn't think of it as that much of a joke, it would have made a nice down payment on a car, but it wouldn't have lasted this long.
  
• In just a week or so I will observe the 10th anniversary of the death of one of my dearest friends.
  
• The Widor Toccata is one of my favorite organ pieces.
  
• I tear up at the sound of the Navy Hymn and feel a special jolt of pride when I hear the trumpet opening of the National Hymn.
  
• I have tried digging to China, but only got as far as their tree roots.
  
• I am not a queen and yet I have two gold crowns.
  
• I once designed a floral arrangement that was delivered to Luciano Pavarotti on his final visit to Indianapolis.
  
• Once I met a man who claimed that he was so in love with a particular woman that it hurt, now 15 plus years later he has gotten over the pain.
  
• I still wonder if 2 out of 3 dentists chew gum for their patients who don't have teeth.
  
• My marbles are not lost, I keep them in a jar in the hutch.
  
• My favorite salad dressing is Bleu Cheese.
  
• My favorite place to eat it is Iria's or Puccini's Smiling Teeth.
  
• I've learned that it's true that, “kisses aren't contracts” I've also learned that handshakes aren't either.
  
• There's no place like home.
  
• At times I want to be alone and I want a sentry at the door to say, “No one sees the great Oz, not nobody, not no how.!” If he wears a green fur hat, it's up to him. (Though I would kinda like that.)
  
• There are times when the above doesn't apply at all.
  
• When Mom said, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out!” she was just kidding, but it still sounds like something that I should believe when I hear it.
  
• Dad told me to stay out of the wood shed, I didn't and I got taken to “the wood shed.” Lesson learned.
  
• I remember Topo Gigo, Beanie and Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, The Jackie Gleason Show with the June Taylor Dancers and Thirtysomething.
  
• Getting to stay up in summertime to see reruns of Red Skelton was a treat.
  
• I still watch reruns of Red Skelton and they are still treats.
  
• I see the irony in an ice cream flavor called Chubby Hubby.
  
• My favorite movie remains Mrs. Miniver.
  
• Mrs. Miniver and Chubby Hubby can be pretty good together on a spring evening.
  

Birthdays are truly a time to look at the good, look at the bad and wonder if there were ways to have made each experience a wonderful learning experience. I've not always done that, but I do enjoy this time of thinking about the fond.

Questions Pondered, Do I Really Need the Answers?

Every now and then there are things that happen in life that I call, “God Moments,” these are times when it is obvious that God's hand is at work, times when there can be no other explanation. They are times where one has to stop and wonder, just how did that work out that way?” Sometimes these God Moments come with what a former co-worker of mine called, “Holy Spirit Bumps,” she thought that if the Spirit of God was involved, one got what we would normally call goose bumps.

Recently I happened to be with a small group of people joined together for worship. Prior to the beginning of the service an offering plate was placed on a table for those who wanted to make a midweek gift. During the service a man, who appeared to be one of the city's homeless came toward the chapel and sat down; he fidgeted for a while and then with a measure of stealth, lifted the better part of the offering and left. He may have made off with less than $20. While others saw it as a theft, I personally saw it as a God Moment. Do I believe that his taking the money from the plate was right? No, it was what it was, stealing. Do I still think that it was a God Moment? Yes.

Why do I think that it was a God Moment? My reasons are simple really; firstly, I would like to think that he used the money for food and maybe he even used the money to feed his family, it isn't my place to say that he didn't, I don't know him. Jesus fed five thousand with a lot less, “bread, than what this visitor took. Secondly, we have a sign over the door of the church that says that all are welcome, many churches all over the city and elsewhere have signs that imply the same thing in one way or another, one of my favorites is, “visitors expected.” I say imply, but really I think that some are more sincere about it than others. I think that while he was certainly welcome, he might have made himself a little too welcome.

If we follow the teachings of Jesus we know that we are to show hospitality and caring to those who aren't exactly pretty, or just those who don't smell good, the prisoner the.... And then the epistles remind us that we often entertain angels unaware, is that what we did? Who is to say really, other than God?

The final thought in this line may be the one that brings it all home for me. Was this man sent to the church for some reason? Did God tell him that a need could be met if he visited the church at an appointed time? I don't want to send the wrong message, I don't think that it's appropriate to march into a church, walk up to the offering plate and help yourself. I do believe that it is stealing, plain and simple. My question is, are there times when it is appropriate to get help some way when you are desperate, aren't there times when we have been at our wits end as to what to do and just did something, right or wrong? At what point is the church supposed to stop helping by giving and start teaching people to care for themselves? If we turn our backs because we are inundated by those begging are we missing some angels that we are supposed to be entertaining?

Now the kicker:
A totally personal aside. I've mentioned many times here that I have arranged dates in an effort to expand my circle of friends, I have also mentioned that of the last five, only one showed up. When I have spoken to others about this they are quick to say to me that it isn't about me, it's about the person who stood me up. I have a problem with this statement because I was involved. The words, “it's not about you,” are batted about, yes, it is about me, the situation included me, willing or not.

I think that there is a parallel here, maybe the fact that the money was taken had nothing really to do with the man who took it. Maybe it was meant to be an eye opening moment for the congregation. Maybe it wasn't as they say, “all about him.” A friend of mine once, in a very joking way, held up his fist and said, “this is me, then he circled his fist with the other and said, “and this is the universe, so see, the world does revolve around me.”

Could this event have been a God Moment? A time when God was using an event to make people more aware, a time when he was opening their eyes? If it was, what did we see? Did we see someone breaking a commandment by stealing? Did we see a hungry, desperate man who simply needed some money for food? Did we just watch an addict get what he needed to satisfy a craving? Or did we see the fact that giving to and sharing with others is a blessing? Was the moment about him, or was it about us? What was God using that moment for?

While I don't have the answers to these questions, I do have another part of the story that I haven't told yet, after the service was over and many stood and talked about what had happened and the offering plate was moved to a, “safer” place so that what was left in it stayed in it, when all was said and done and the offering plate was finally carried away there wasn't just the two or three dollars that the man left behind. There was probably something to the tune of $80 or better. I think this was a God Moment, I think that it was a feeding of maybe twelve, and remember with five thousand there were considerable left overs. I think that it was a God Moment when we consider what some of Jesus' last words were; he said to a thief, nailed to a cross next to him, “today you will be with me in paradise.” Thinking on that I just got Holy Spirit Bumps.

Having a Kathy-like Faith

“Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5b

I think of these words penned by the psalmist as words of both pain and cure. For whatever reason the tears, he realized that come the morning there would be joy. This is a concept that for most of us in this day and age seems foreign. I'll be one of the first to say that whatever may have me weeping, I will most likely be dealing with it for more than just a night. I think that it seems, notice I said seems, that there are very few things in life that can be healed over night, that with a good night's sleep the rejoicing will come. There are a pile of examples and I probably don't need to list any of them because there have been some that have already come to mind while you have read this.

I'm going to share an experience where this has been the case for me, it will seem like I'm back on my death kick again, but let's just say that the story here only sounds that way until the end. I have several women friends, all of them past the beginning of their social security applying age. It dawned on me the other day that only one of the three of them has a child. Some would say that alone causes the joy in the morning. I don't think that all of them would agree though. Each of them are facing hard times right now, physically, each of them have come to the point where something isn't working like it used to...wait, I'm not talking about me here. Guess that starts at different times for different people.

One of my, “girlfriends,” as I'm want to call them gave me a ring at work the other day and covered a little business with me and then asked me some questions about her casket spray. I have no idea of her age, frankly, don't really care. I know that she has no family, only adopted family. She asked me if it was possible to add water to the spray. I told her it could be done, she wanted to know if I would move it to the church after the service, I told her to speak to her funeral director about that, but they probably would. I told her that she would most likely bury me, so she didn't really need to worry about such things. There was no change of tone in her voice, she was still what I would call a bit merry while talking about this. “Oh, I don't know about that Dear Heart,” I love it when she calls me that. “I don't plan on lasting that long.” She proceeded to tell me that she had had a mastectomy recently, that the doctor told her that her cancer was fast growing and that she didn't think that it would be wise for her to go through chemotherapy or radiation. She also told her that there may not be any pain really, she would do like so many and go to sleep and not wake up.

My Aunt Grace who lived to be over a hundred used to say that she wanted to go to bed and wake up hearing harp music, it didn't work out quite that way, but close. I suppose that it is our desire if we really think about it, we don't want to suffer, we don't want to have to go through toxic treatments and then have to recover from those, but if we think that doing so will add years to our lives and they more often do than don't these days, we tend to rethink being repaired that way. Kathy doesn't want to do that and she's been advised not to, so like she said, “I trust the doctor.”

Still with a merry voice she said, “so Dear Heart, I don't have any plans to outlast you. In fact, I'm looking forward to being in the presence of my maker, I want to be with my husband, we had a good 58 year run and I miss being with him. It really does sound good to me.”
When we got off of the phone, I cried. Frankly, I'm not ready to let go of her, I'm not ready to let go of any of my girlfriends, nor am I ready to let loose of anyone else. Selfish as that may sound. I don't want my life to change in that way.

My life changed when my friends Doug, Clarissa and several others passed from life to eternal life and there are holes in my life where they used to fit. There are no more Clarissa kisses, which means that I haven't had deep plum lipstick on top of my head for a couple of years now. Doug will be gone 10 years this year and I miss him. There are those in my family who have left several holes, my father being the biggest one and several that have been left by my aunts and grandparents. We really don't plan of these things happening, but know that they will at some point or another.

After talking to Kathy I thought about this line from the psalms, I wondered if she had thought about that very line when she received her diagnosis. Did she cry for a night only to wake knowing that her joy was coming. Now I admire her faith, knowing that she is, “going to meet her maker,” as she said, is a joyful thing. I felt a bit of shame when I thought of the line that I have said time and again, “If heaven is what we are told that it is, (I believe that it is,) then why aren't we running to it?” When I said this to a friend recently he had a simple response that is very poignant, “who says we aren't?” Good point.

So it sounds to me that Kathy has accepted the words of Psalm 30, “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Frankly, that's faith.