Wear Love. . . Colossians 3:12 - 17

On December 27 I delivered the message at First United Methodist in Marshall, Missouri

12-14 So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

15-17 Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

    “Love came down at Christmas. . .star and angels gave the sign.”   We sing the Christmas carol with the message of Jesus’ birth.   So the Scripture from Colossians 3:12-17 is a natural one to follow the Advent series.   The Apostle Paul was writing to Christians in the small village of Colossee in what is now the country of Turkey.    A movement there was discrediting the importance of Jesus Christ. . .         Today we are aware of many groups in our culture which disdain the Christian message.    We stand with the Colossians in needing encouragement to live out the age old message of living in love.

     The Christmas season infects us with good feelings of charity for others and love for mankind.  When we hear the Salvation Army bellringers, we are want to share with needy people.   Yes,  we want to “wear love”. What better metaphor for keeping love in our everyday living then the one of putting on your clothes?   We get up every day and get dressed.  Let’s just do it.   Love everyone.    Not as easy as it sounds, however.    We tend to be a distinctly unloveable bunch as human beings.     We can love our families. . .often we love our children with the ferocity of wild animals.   Just watch a bunch of parents at a Little League baseball game.    But, brotherly love for all people is quite a different matter.

      So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you:  compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength and compassion.  If we are going to wear love,  perhaps we should consider this list of qualities as our “Under Armour.”   You may smile because UnderArmour is the brand name of popular sportswear  these days.  But the name goes back centuries.   Before knights put on their heavy metal suits, they called for their squire or servant to bring their UnderArmour to put on.       Not a bad metaphor to go along with wearing love.  but wearing love can be a tight fit.   Unless we put on the “underarmour” of humility and discipline, we will not have the quiet strength we need to have compassion and  kindness.

     Humility is not a popular quality in our culture. Humility does not sell anything in our commercial world.    Inside every one of us is a persistent voice that cries, “But what about me?    I want. . ., I need . . ., It is not fair. . .”   If we are to develop the knack for exercising brotherly love, we need discipline to look at ourselves and see our shortcomings, our mistakes and our basic human self-centeredness.    We must put our lives on pause, take a good hard look at ourselves and ask for forgiveness.  Jesus the master forgives us quickly and completely.     

       We also need discipline to hit the pause button and allow holiness to enter our life.   To be still.   To listen.   To feel the presence of holiness.  The quiet of  a sanctuary, the beauty of music.  To connect to the redeeming grace of God.

        Sometimes we need the discipline in relationships to refrain from saying things.    Sometimes it is wearing love to avoid saying something unkind.     You know the old saying,   “Silence is golden.   Duct tape is silver.”  Every opinion does not need to be shared.

     And at other times we need discipline to speak up. On November 28 in Istanbul, Turkey Pope Francis visited a mosque and emphasized that Christians are brothers to Muslims.     Millions of peace-loving Muslims reject Islamic terrorism.      In London last month when a terrorist knifed 3 people and shouted that he was Islamic, a person in the crowd was heard to say, “You ain’t no Muslim, Bruv”.   Street talk for brother.    On twitter, a hashtag, “you ain’t no Muslim, Bruv”, received thousands of responses from all over the world. . .from angry  Muslims. For years,  psychiatrists, who happen to be Muslim, have come to Marshall  from Columbia to see kids at Butterfield.   Those of us who worked with them know they were appalled at the atrocities committed in the name of Islam.    These Muslims are no more responsible for terrorists than Christians are for White Supremacists or the 

Ku Klux Klan.    We need the discipline to speak up as Pope Francis has.

   So, we put on the Under Armour of compassion, kindness, humility, discipline and we achieve  quiet strength.   We wear love.    Do we all look alike - Christians in uniform?   No, because we all have different gifts.Patsy Dehn and her sister, Marilyn Ahrens, have the gifts of working with flour in their kitchens.    John Boyd shares love by  providing snacks for the coffee hour after church.   You are invited.   Oh yes, I must not forget Patsy’s husband Roger Dehn - he does not get around very well, but he decorated 19 dozen cookies for the Baby Grace Christmas party, a very special occasion earlier this month.    If I were to ask how many people in the congregation have contributed in some way to the Baby Grace program,  90 % of you would raise your hands.    This program is truly an expression of brotherly love from our entire church.

    Let me review what Baby Grace is for those of you who may not know.  Nine years ago, in Buckner, Missouri, two young women became aware that there were 27 pregnant girls in their high school and they set out to do something to help.    Today there are 12 such programs in rural Missouri on the east side of Kansas City.    We give a bundle of 12 diapers and wipes to low income families once a week on Thursday afternoons.    We have been in operation for one year in January, and have given away 12000 diapers to almost 60 families.   From the beginning we have wanted to connect the families with every resource available in the community.  Not easy.    We support the efforts of other churches.   We have a group of dedicated volunteers, some of them members of other churches.    Recently, we were able to connect with the Mid Missouri Safe Kids Coalition in Sedalia and we were able to give 16 families new carseats.   On December 3, we had a Christmas party for babies and mothers and toddlers.  We had snacks and crafts and stories and gifts and everyone had a good time.       Baby  Grace has been our gift of love in community outreach.

     So, we have put on our UnderArmour - compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength and discipline - and we are reaching for our basic,  all purpose garment.   We must never be without it.      

 

The Crayon Box

Written in response to a Marshall Writers Guild monthly prompt for writing. . .
     "The Color of Life".      I had a box of 48 Crayolas on the table before me.

See the colors of Mid-America:
First comes Dandelion calling spring
Then Zinnia summer and Goldenrod fall
Sea-Green  fields under Cornflower skies
Cantaloupe dawn and Timberwolf dusk
The Sparrow-Gray of weathered barns
Indigo overalls and checkered aprons
Chestnut  horses wearing Mahogany saddles
May I add Snowdrift White and Angus Black?
Plus the swirling shades of the muddy river. . .

Marching Down South Odell

First  published in the Marshall Writers Guild 2015 fall anthology, "On the Street Where You Live".

One Friday afternoon in the fall of 1947, the marching band of Central

Methodist College dominated traffic on South Odell as they marched to the Missouri Valley College Gregg-Mitchell Field.  The two schools were to meet on the gridiron. The brassy music of Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite (Karl King) could be heard up and down the street. 

As a member of the band, Bedford Knipschild, who played in the woodwind section (a clarinet) recalled that day…

Keith Anderson, the proud and ambitious music professor at Central Methodist College (now Central Methodist University), decided to show off his talented group  He had the bus stop on the south side of the Saline County Courthouse square, in front of Red Cross Pharmacy. The 1.4 mile parade to Valley’s football field included a significant portion of Highway 65 on South Odell Street. No bypass of Marshall existed at that time, and Odell was not just Business 65 as it is today. Truckers and motorists on their north and south cross-country routes were forced to wait while the music played on and the musicians tramped on.

Girl musicians had their own band, but the two groups assembled together to march. At half-time of the game, the girls entered from one endand the boys from the other, combining to perform their signature numberonce again, Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite.

In addition to Knipschild, Bill Mitchell Lovell, from Moberly, was another member of the band. Bill, who was a music major, later founded the Vox Box, Marshall’s music store. Also playing in the band was the late Wayne Rucker, who went on to own and operate The Marshall Messenger and Rucker Sign Shop. Several other Marshall notables attended the Fayette college in the era of the 40s; among those were:  Alvin Lowe, who became principal of Marshall High School and later served as superintendent of schools and Hugh Dubois who, as an optometrist, served Marshall residents for many years. Clarinetist Knipschild went on to become a medical doctor who practiced medicine at Odell Avenue Medical Clinic in Marshall.

When Knipschild graduated from high school in the spring of 1945, he joined the Navy. The military was training recruits for the invasion of Japan in America’s final push to end World War Two. But then in August of 1945, America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered. So after 15 months in the Navy, Knipschild was discharged. That was when he enrolled at Central Methodist College, taking advantage of his GI bill benefits.

Chemistry was his college major because as he put it, “I didn’t have Chemistry at Norborne High School, and I thought it sounded good.”After two years, he transferred to Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Upon receiving his bachelor degree, Knipschild was advised that -- jobs for chemistry majors were mostly in the oil industry. That information caused him to rethink a career in chemistry, and, “There was no air conditioning at the time, and it was too hot to live in Texas.”

Someone told him he should go to medical school.

Acting upon that suggestion, he returned to Missouri where he attended the two year medical school at the University of Missouri in Columbia, followed by graduation from Northwestern University in Chicago. 

Eventually Knipschild, as a medical doctor returned to Missouri and began a general practice. He devoted 44 years to medicine, much of those years were on South Odell at the Odell Avenue Medical Clinic. He and his wife, the late Kathryn Detring Knipschild, raised three daughters, Ann, Kay, and Susan, in their home on North Brunswick.  Thinking back to that fall day of 1947, Knipschild laughed. . .the Central Methodist Eagles went down in defeat to the Missouri Valley Vikings by 27 - 14.   But when the CMC band marched down Highway 65, stopping traffic from both directions, they ruled the day.   

Emily Dickinson

We grow accustomed to the Dark--
 When Light is put away --
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye--

A Moment--We uncertain step
For newness of the night--
Then--fit our Vision to the Dark--
And meet the Road--erect--

And so of larger--Darknesses--
Those Evenings of the Brain--
When not a Moon disclose a sign--
Or Star--come out--within--

The Bravest--grope a little--
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead--
But as they learn to see--

Either the Darkness alters--
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight--
And Life steps almost straight.

Why I Write

Me and Hemingway

   Hemingway sharpened twenty pencils before beginning his writing each day.    I require Uniball Vision Elite pens which I buy in bulk at Cosco.  They feel right in my hand when I commit my personal narratives about life to a hardback 8 x 12 inch journal.  Beginning at age 30, I have written about my personal experiences, frustrations and inspirations, now a collection of almost 40 bound books in my own script.

   Unlike Hemingway, I don’t write fiction.   I have developed a lifetime habit of recording events and my reaction to them.   I write to the headlines, to snatches of overheard conversations, bits of Sunday messages, lines of hymns.  Beautiful fall weather, joyous family occasions, the loss of dear friends, reminiscences of times past.   Middle of the night despair and anxiety sends me to my pen and paper to write out prayers.   Then I sleep.

       As I see it, writing for me has never been a vocation on any scale of measure.  I simply am compelled to record my thoughts  and reflect on my realities.   It is the very way I interact with life.

    My earliest memory of writing is in the third grade at Jester School.   In my notebook, I wrote down things my teacher said that seemed interesting to me and also funny things one or another of the kids said during the school day.   I had an abundance of time as there were eight grades in the room and I was the only one in my class.  When I read my jottings to my mother, I think she found it horrifying as she was a former teacher and she gave me to understand that this was not the way to be a good student.   So I went back to coloring pictures of Lassie in my free time.

    Hemingway ran with the bulls in Spain.   I spent a lot of time with cows as a child in Mid-Missouri.   I admired their serenity and their meadow routine. . .mornings by the pond, afternoons lying in the shade.  Often I joined the herd.  They were so used to me that they didn’t move or stop chewing their cud.   I made up songs about nature and animals and sang to them.   As well these compositions did not survive as the lyrics were quite childish.

   Once I found some index cards in a desk drawer and I was inspired to invent characters of an entire town that dwelled under trees and along hollows in the barn pasture.   The plot strangely resembled the Western movies I saw on Saturday afternoons.   Surely I deserved an A for effort in this endeavor, but when I told my teacher, my mother and school friends about my creation , they just looked at me with an odd expression  and said, “Hmph!”   That ended my flirtation with fiction.

      As an adult, I have become fascinated with personal stories.  As a psychiatric nurse therapist, I was privileged to fall deeply into the personal lives of hundreds of individuals.   I learned from every person with whom I engaged.    Professionally, I published in nursing journals two or three times, and I contributed to a textbook on dealing with children after  disasters which was published by Johns Hopkin Press after 9/11.  But my most satisfying project has been a collection of life stories of people born before 1940, self published in 2007.  Writing a memoir for my family was another rewarding self-published venture.   In the Missouri Historical Society Biographical papers room, I am proud to say that “Along the Hedge Row” by Carol Raynor is shelved right beside the memoir of Sally Rand, well-known stripper from Sedalia, Missouri.  

     To be called an “author” is an embarrassment to me, a false distinction.    I write because I simply have to write.   I am hopeful that someday a future descendant will search for and appreciate my complete works.

    Hemingway experienced a turbulent life as a successful writer; strong drink wreaked havoc.    My drink of choice as an adult has been double strength iced coffee.   Here ends my parallel with the famous man.    I have had a steady, contented existence as an unknown and undiscovered talent.   

Conversation

From the Kansas City Star during the Pope's recent visit to the USA:
. . .The Jesuit way of proceeding in conversation consists of five principles:  being slow to speak; listening attentively; seeking the truth  in what others are saying: disagreeing humbly and thoughtfully; and allowing the conversation the time it needs.

I’m Too Old for This

by DOMINIQUE BROWNING AUG. 8, 2015  New York Times

There is a lot that is annoying, and even terrible, about aging. The creakiness of the body; the drifting of the memory; the reprising of personal history ad nauseam, with only yourself to listen.

But there is also something profoundly liberating about aging: an attitude, one that comes hard won. Only when you hit 60 can you begin to say, with great aplomb: “I’m too old for this.”

This line is about to become my personal mantra. I have been rehearsing it vigorously, amazed at how amply I now shrug off annoyances that once would have knocked me off my perch.

A younger woman advised me that “old” may be the wrong word, that I should consider I’m too wise for this, or too smart. But old is the word I want. I’ve earned it.

And let’s just start with being an older woman, shall we? Let others feel bad about their chicken wings — and their bottoms, their necks and their multitude of creases and wrinkles. I’m too old for this. I spent years, starting before I was a teenager, feeling insecure about my looks.

No feature was spared. My hairline: Why did I have to have a widow’s peak, at 10? My toes: too short. My entire body: too fat, and once, even, in the depths of heartbreak, much too thin. Nothing felt right. Well, O.K., I appreciated my ankles. But that’s about it.

What torture we inflict upon ourselves. If we don’t whip ourselves into loathing, then mean girls, hidden like trolls under every one of life’s bridges, will do it for us.

Even the vogue for strange-looking models is little comfort; those women look perfectly, beautifully strange, in a way that no one else does. Otherwise we would all be modeling.

One day recently I emptied out an old trunk. It had been locked for years; I had lost the key and forgotten what was in there. But, curiosity getting the best of me on a rainy afternoon, I managed to pry it open with a screwdriver.

It was full of photographs. There I was, ages 4 to 40. And I saw for the first time that even when I was in the depths of despair about my looks, I had been beautiful.

And there were all my friends; girls and women with whom I had commiserated countless times about hair, weight, all of it, doling out sympathy and praise, just as I expected it heaped upon me: beautiful, too. We were, we are, all beautiful. Just like our mothers told us, or should have. (Ahem.)

Those smiles, radiant with youth, twinkled out of the past, reminding me of the smiles I know today, radiant with strength.

Young(er) women, take this to heart: Why waste time and energy on insecurity? I have no doubt that when I’m 80 I’ll look at pictures of myself when I was 60 and think how young I was then, how filled with joy and beauty.

I’m happy to have a body that is healthy, that gets me where I want to go, that maybe sags and complains, but hangs in there. So maybe I’m too old for skintight jeans, too old for six-inch stilettos, too old for tattoos and too old for green hair.

Weight gain? Simply move to the looser end of the wardrobe, and stop hanging with Ben and Jerry. No big deal. Nothing to lose sleep over. Anyway, I’m too old for sleep, or so it seems most nights.

Which leaves me a bit cranky in the daytime, so it is a good thing I can now work from home. Office politics? Sexism? I’ve seen it all. Watching men make more money, doing less work. Reading the tea leaves as positions shuffle, listening to the kowtow and mumble of stifled resentment.

I want to tell my younger colleagues that it doesn’t matter. Except the sexism, which, like poison ivy, is deep-rooted: You weed the rampant stuff, but it pops up again.

What matters most is the work. Does it give you pleasure, or hope? Does it sustain your soul? My work as a climate activist is the hardest and most fascinating I’ve ever done. I’m too old for the dark forces, for hopelessness and despair. If everyone just kept their eyes on the ball, and followed through each swing, we’d all be more productive, and not just on the golf course.

The key to life is resilience, and I’m old enough to make such a bald statement. We will always be knocked down. It’s the getting up that counts. By the time you reach upper middle age, you have started over, and over again.

And, I might add, resilience is the key to feeling 15 again. Which is actually how I feel most of the time.

But I am too old to try to change people. By now I’ve learned, the very hard way, that what you see in someone at the beginning is what you get forevermore. Most of us are receptive to a bit of behavior modification. But through decades of listening to people complain about marriages or lovers, I hear the same refrains.

I have come to realize that there is comfort in the predictability, even the ritualization, of relationship problems. They become a dance step; each partner can twirl through familiar moves, and do-si-do until the music stops.

Toxic people? Sour, spoiled people? I’m simply walking away; I have little fight left in me. It’s easier all around to accept that friendships have ebbs and flows, and indeed, there’s something quite beautiful about the organic nature of love.

I used to think that one didn’t make friends as one got older, but I’ve learned that the opposite happens. Sometimes, unaccountably, a new person walks into your life, and you find you are never too old to love again. And again. (See resilience.)

One is never too old for desire. Having entered the twilight of my dating years, I can tell you it is much easier to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of anticipation and disappointment when you’ve had plenty of experience with the shoals and eddies of shallow waters. Emphasis on shallow. By now, we know deep.

Take a pass on bad manners, on thoughtlessness, on unreliability, on carelessness and on all the other ways people distinguish themselves as unappealing specimens. Take a pass on your own unappealing behavior, too: the pining, yearning, longing and otherwise frittering away of valuable brainwaves that could be spent on Sudoku, or at least a jigsaw puzzle, if not that Beethoven sonata you loved so well in college.

My new mantra is liberating. At least once a week I encounter a situation that in the old (young) days would have knocked me to my knees or otherwise spun my life off center.

Now I can spot trouble 10 feet away (believe me, this is a big improvement), and I can say to myself: Too old for this. I spare myself a great deal of suffering, and as we all know, there is plenty of that to be had without looking for more.

If there can be such a thing as a best-selling app like Yo, which satisfies so many urges to boldly announce ourselves, I want one called 2old4this. A signature kiss-off to all that was once vexatious. A goodbye to all that has done nothing but hold us back. That would be an app worth having. But, thankfully, I’m too old to need such a thing.

Dominique Browning is the senior director of Moms Clean Air Force. She blogs at slowlovelife.com.

How They Do Live On

A reading from the funeral of a friend, Kathryn Knipchild. . .

How They Do Live On 

HOW THEY DO LIVE on, those giants of our childhood, and how well they manage to take even death in their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they may have come to life since, it is beyond a doubt that they live still in us. Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still. The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill , taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us—and through them we come to understand ourselves—in new ways too. Who knows what "the communion of saints" means, but surely it means more than just that we are all of us haunted by ghosts because they are not ghosts, these people we once knew, not just echoes of voices that have years since ceased to speak, but saints in the sense that through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us. They have their own business to get on with now, I assume—"increasing in knowledge and love of Thee," says the Book of Common Prayer, and moving "from strength to strength," which sounds like business enough for anybody— and one imagines all of us on this shore fading for them as they journey ahead toward whatever new shore may await them; but it is as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours. That is perhaps why to think of them is a matter not only of remembering them as they used to be but of seeing and hearing them as in some sense they are now. If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too, nor are they by any means always things we expect or the same things.    Frederick Buechner The Sacred Journey 

A List

I love words.  Especially these words.   I looked them up in the on line thesaurus.   It seems to me they represent our brand as Christians.   Or perhaps they are my grocery shopping list.

Hope                           Compassion                   Love                               Faith
Inspiration                   Goodwill                       Tenderness                     Peace
Worship                       Concern                         Passion                          Understanding
Prayer                          Kindness                        Loyalty                          Unity
Grace                           Empathy                        Communication              Kinship
Inspiration                   Tolerance                       Relationship                   Harmony
Blessing                       Mercy                            Caring                             Shalom

Connection with an Older Generation

Luke Haug, 17 years old, sitting on an Allis Chalmers tractor

like the one his great-grandfather, William Leeper Mallman, drove in the 1940s.   

Organizing your living space!

I love to read organization books!    Not that I ever get my household decluttered or organized.  I just like to think about it and pretend that I am going to do it.

So I jumped right into The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up:  the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing by Marie Kondo.   Following are two quotes:

"The act of folding is far more than making clothes compact for storage. It is an act of caring, an expression of love and appreciation for the way these clothes support your lifestyle.  Therefore, when we fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies."

. . ."The socks and stockings stored in your drawer are essentially on holiday.  They take a brutal beating in their daily work, trapped between your foot and your shoe, enduring pressure and friction to protect your precious feet.  The time they spend in your drawer is their only chance to rest.  But if they are folded over, balled up, or tied, they are always in a state of tension, their fabric stretched and their elastic pulled.  They roll about and bump into each other every time the drawer is opened and closed.  Any socks and stockings unfortunate enough to get pushed to the back of the drawer are often forgotten for so long that their elastic stretches beyond recovery.  When the owner finally discovers them and puts them on, it will be  to late and they will be relegated to the garbage.   What treatment could be worse than this?"


How inspirational!

Birdwatching

A fat little gray wren was scouting around my back deck one day this spring.   I heard her song and as I was headed into town on errands, I purchased a deluxe birdhouse.   Within the hour, she took possession just opposite my kitchen window.  With copious rain and winds, our roof was littered with twigs, seed pods and leaves.   I think it was like Walmart for nest builders.   The pair of wrens has been busy and their music has brightened the cloudy days we have experienced.

Last week I was focused on watching a small flycatcher catching a large carpenter bee under the eaves of my garage. . .quite a battle.    As I was transfixed, my car moved slowly toward the garage and suddenly CRUNCH!   I raked the side along the side of the door.   An expensive lapse of attention!    Birdwatching and driving are not a good combination.

Abraham Lincoln

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years."  A. Lincoln

Two Texas Gentlemen

                    Jeremiah and Isaac Trussell before an orchestra concert. . .December, 2014

A Restaurant Experience

London April 5, 2015 - 

On the streets leading to London’s Chinatown, we are jostled by crowds of tourists speaking a cacophony of languages.   Richard shifts his wallet to an inside zipped pocket to avoid the ever-present pickpockets. 

 Exotic fragrances drift across the pedestrian mall, about 2 blocks long, with an Oriental arch at the farthest point.   Probably half a dozen restaurants and as many Chinese groceries line the walkway which is jammed with people. At one end a woman dressed in a long white dress sings sweetly to recorded music.  At the other end, a tall lovely lady in elaborate traditional flowing red kimono with coiffed hair and gracefully wielding a fan allows photos to be taken with her for coins in the basket.  And mid-way, a 12 foot tall stuffed panda dances and poses with children for photos for a donation.   The discerning eye can see a transparent patch above his belly button for the actor inside to view the outside world.

Dressed chickens and ducks hang outside groceries ready for sale.   “Dim 

Sum” is advertised in restaurants, small plates of specialty items - dumplings, steamed rice balls with fruit and vegetables.   A particular favorite is cooked chicken feet with attached skin and claws.  

We choose to eat at the Golden Pagoda.   We are greeted graciously and ushered up 20 steps to the second floor.  But we don’t stop there. . .up another 20 steps to an attic-like space with two tables for six, a small bar and a dumbwaiter to bring up food from the kitchen below.   Our server is courteous and efficient - dressed in black, has a peroxide streak in his hair, talks in Chinese to the other helpers.

I exercise self-control. The area gives me claustrophobia and I always look for the fire escape in close quarters.   Of course there is none.   But here we are!  The six of us order a five course fixed menu.    Richard and I share a pint of Chinese beer while we sample starters of sweet and sour ribs, fried sesame toast and crispy seaweed followed by a course of roasted duck which we wrapped in rice pancakes with plum sauce.   After our dishes were removed, plates of crispy chili beets, stir fried vegetables, deep fried squid, bok  choy and prawns were brought to the table.   And - oh yes - sweet and sour pork and cashew chicken that taste nothing like American style Chinese cooking.   

A visit to the restroom takes us back to the second floor.   I am pleased that

the bathrooms are spacious and modern.   The crush for space in central London often causes public restrooms to be on the lower level of the building, down stairs that are just a glorified ladder and sometimes located under the street in a cave-like facility.

We gorged on the exotic feast, some of the most delicious unusual food I have ever eaten.  Had to leave some leftovers as the British do not honor the custom of take home boxes.  They also do not tip as generously as we do in the States, five to ten percent is standard.

We dragged our thoroughly satiated bodies down the two flights of winding stairs and out into the cold misty weather.   As we walked 45 minutes to our parked car, the London homeless were dragging their cardboard boxes into doorways with their tattered blankets to settle for the night.  We dodged babbling groups of teen-agers taking selfies in front of familiar landmarks.   A sensuous experience of the teeming city which will live on in our memories for years.

On Forgiveness

". . .forgiveness means that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving, too, and that to withhold love or blessings is to be completely delusional." 
                                 Anne Lamott  "Small Victories" 

The Llangollen Canal

I have been told that memory has a gestational aspect.   Our 5 day trip this spring on this ancient
canal near Birmingham, England, was an uncomfortable adventure with rain, cold wind and even
sleet at times.    When we got the photos back, we were enraptured.   "What a wonderful trip!
The bad weather doesn't show up in the photos at all."    Pictured is my son-in-law Jens at the
tiller.   I am standing in the back doorway wearing all the clothes I packed - just to keep warm, Grandson Thor on the side and Susanne in front lashing ropes to moor us.  In the late 1700s and early 1800s a draft horse pulled the boats using this path and
slate, gravel and coal were transported to all parts of the UK.   The railroads made the canals obsolete, but they are used by tourists now.   We cooked ourselves except for the occasional stop at a village pub for lunch.    Went over two impressive aqueducts at Chirk and Pontcystelle on the
England-Wales border.  Below:  Jens making hot tea, Thor and Richard opening the sluice gate on one of the locks, Thor, 8, and Bjorn, 11.

2015 Courtwarming Queen

Gershwin

I was never an accomplished pianist after taking piano lessons as a child.    But I loved my piano teacher, Mrs. Ruth Storts.    As an adult, I have had spells of playing the piano.   I failed to grasp the idea that "practice makes perfect."    When I couldn't play something, I felt impatient and angry and told myself other people can play so much better, why am I trying?    But one winter my friend Mary Lou, an accomplished musician, challenged me to play a duet with her.  We played "Country Gardens" for a few friends.   After many struggles, I began to see that practice truly does produce "muscle memory" or something mysterious!

Having performance anxiety, I play better when I am alone.   In January, I decided to play Gershwin.
Old Readers Digest Music Collections lent me several choices.    "The Man I Love" was pretty simple, "Summertime", a little more difficult.   Finally. . .I worked on "An American in Paris" and "Rhapsody in Blue".    I make my grandchildren listen to one selection now and then.  

Another friend, Virginia, felt she was getting forgetful.    So she chose a difficult classical piano piece and learned it.    It proved to her that her brain was still functioning fine!     Music is a gift.  

An email from Susanne:

Quite an adventure yesterday - I took the boys on a 3 hour scuba trip from our hotel. We happen to be the only ones on board and had I known all the details I think I wouldn't have done it! From the harbour at the hotel we took a speed boat put into the main bay where we stopped at the coast guard and had to show our passports - why passports for scuba diving you ask? Well it so happened that we were headed to the international waters just off the coast of Iran for our dive!!! It wasn't bad diving but not worth the anxiety! 

Going into the desert tomorrow then heading home on Saturday. It's been quite an adventure! 

XSuz

My daughter Susanne in a burka!     She and Thor are outside a mosque in Abu Dhabi where Jens is
working as project manager of a new airport and the boys are on school break.  She had to wear a
burka to go inside the mosque.     What an adventure!

The Dangers of Narcissism

From Writing Blue Highways - The Story of How a Book Happened        
                                  -  William Least Heat Moon

    As pieces and paragraphs finally began to adhere into themes, pre-eminent among them was narcissism, a widespread and deadly contagion that began rising in the late sixties and early seventies and was fast moving to social domination.  When you consider the perils to human continuance within a humane civilization, at the heart of each one lurks narcissism.  We solve nothing until we solve ourselves.  

Humility

Anwar Sadat, third president of Egypt, made the following comments:    ". . .depending on an outward success alienates a man from himself.   Self alienation leads to loss of inner light and the end
of possibility of vision.   Fasting and mediation leads to a friendship with God (and restoration of
peace within oneself)."       As reported by Gail Sheehy in Daring My Passages.  

Do You Believe in Angels?

After Christmas, Carrie was on her way back to Missouri from Texas, driving alone.  Near the Colorado-Kansas border, snow was falling, but I-70 was quite drivable.   About 6 pm she got off the road to get something to eat.  The exit ramp was slick and she went straight down the side.   It was too dark to see.  She put on her hazard lights and prepared to call Star 55, the highway patrol.   She was very upset and did not know the number of the exit.   She heard a man's voice saying,"Are you OK?"   She said she thought so.   He said, "Do you have four wheel drive?"    She was driving the Jeep so she said yes.   He said, "It's flat down there.  Turn around and drive straight up, and you will be back on the road."   She did just that.  She never saw the man.    Goodland was 50 miles away so she went there to stay in a motel for the night.   Traveling Mercies!