Tuesday 28 July 2015

Sparkles

The grocery store aisle ahead was blocked by a disabled woman whose spine bent so far over her shopping cart that I could barely see the back of her wigged brown head. I reminded myself to be patient and soon was able to ease past, feeling the merest flicker of compassion as I carried on. 
After checkout, I was forced to pause again, this time by a large man and his cart of bottled water in front of me. He had a face and head that looked kind of like a bowling ball covered in whiskers; he was missing a front tooth. Not my kind of person. 
I saw his attention drawn to the same woman now at a counter where she was about to pack her grocery bags despite her contorted posture. He edged closer and with a strong accent asked, “You want some help?” She accepted.
In passing, I tapped his arm gingerly and said “Good for you” as I hustled to the exit.
Sometimes we get a second try. Driving out of the parking lot I noticed him standing near his car. Since there was no traffic behind me, I lowered the passenger window and stopped to call, “You’re a good man!” A smile enhanced his homely face. He replied, “And you are good to say that.” Light all round.
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Now that the scaffolding had been removed, I could see the renovated sign on a local Bloor St. hangout called “The Crooked Cue”. I stopped on the sidewalk across the street to figure out why the construction had taken so long. 
In bright white letters I read the same old name with the addition of “Patio, Pool, Food”. Through their new second-floor wall of windows I could see sun umbrellas lit from above by daylight. My little peabrain wondered for a second,
“What? They’ve added a swimming pool?”
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In front of our neighbourhood’s Roman Catholic church I noticed a woman looking lost. I asked if I could help and she gestured to the huge building, “I wanted to go in and pray but the construction workers inside are playing such loud music.” I murmured sympathy and suggested another neighbourhood church but we agreed that finding any quiet place is a challenge. She said she would sit on the church steps to pray. Although we didn't even introduce ourselves, I was cheered to meet a fellow praying pilgrim.
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Nearing the bakery I noticed a delivery truck at its back door and a couple of rough-looking guys unloading. By the time I parked and entered, one of them, white-haired and beer-bellied (oops, sounds too familiar) with a scruffy beard, had reached the top of the basement stairs just inside the door. We both hesitated politely until he gestured for me to go ahead. 
By coincidence, a few minutes later I was leaving the store at the very time the same man was re-entering. This time he held the door open for me. I walked through laughing and said, “I guess we’re destined to dance together today”. 
I hooted when I heard from behind me, “You betcha, Babe!” Made my day.


Monday 20 July 2015

Home Again, Home Again

Every time my dad pulled the family car into our driveway, he quoted, “Home again, home again, jiggedy jig”. Later I discovered the nursery rhyme source, but to me the phrase was our family tradition for marking the end of a trip.
Recently, I gained new appreciation for the significance of coming home.

 According to personality tests, I am an introvert. Although I’m loud at parties, and the first kid with my hand up in any class, I need to balance social interaction with plenty of time alone. When this summer's calendar held two non-stop weeks of being with relatives and meeting strangers, I knew I was heading for trouble. 
Both events were welcome, one week with my three daughters and their families, and a second week in Austin, Texas with relatives and other guests at my great-niece's wedding. However, had the choice been mine, I would not have scheduled such visits back to back.

During the preceding weeks I asked God to give me patient stamina and unselfish love. I had little faith that I could sail peacefully through the tiring, though valued, interactions, and required group activities, along with the added buzzing of  seven dear children who ranged in age from 2 to 11. 
Help me, please!

Sure enough, the fortnight was draining. I slept, or rather tried to sleep, in guest rooms and motels, nursing an attack-cold all the while. Up and down subway stairs, through tedious airports and during long highway drives, I kept smiling (there are photos) and doing the next thing expected of me. Fatigue increased as I tried to be a good mom and grandmother, a sweet aunt and sister.
“God, please keep my tongue from saying anything critical or cranky.”
As usual, my faithful husband was the one who suffered my private complaints. 
There was no miracle of calm inner seas, but I found surprizing endurance and enjoyed good conversations that deepened relationships. It was a pleasure to watch family and friends have fun together as I dragged myself around in the heat, ready with cough drops and tissues.

Besides illness and fatigue, a third companion on the marathon was my longing for home. I confess that my favourite place on earth is my bed on Humbervale Boulevard. Denied it for two whole weeks (and not on retreat at a hushed convent), I felt like I was only half alive. I staggered from the overload of noise, activity and strong emotions, not alone enough to regain stability. 

God did give me one quiet break, just long enough to catch a second wind. On our first morning in Austin, my husband shook me awake at the motel saying,
 “It’s 8:30. Are you coming for breakfast?” 
Nothing excites him like a free breakfast, no matter its quality. I groaned and stayed in bed until he returned with a sheepish apology, “Oops, I forgot the time change. It was only 7:30.”
As a morning person I was, by then, fully awake and talked him into going immediately to a local labyrinth I’d seen on-line. After that we’d head to Starbucks for real coffee. 
The meditative walk along a labyrinth’s looping path often calms my spirit and helps align my thoughts to God’s better perspective. 

We soon found ourselves, early enough for the breeze to be cool, under shade trees on a spacious property owned by Christ Episcopal Church, Cedar Park. At the opening to the lovely stone-lined labyrinth walkway, I stopped to settle down and to open my needy, tired heart to God. Into my mind came a motherly “There, there”. 
Instead of divine correction of my self-pity I heard tender reassurance.
It felt like getting a letter from home when I was away at summer camp.
I spent a silent hour doing the prayerful, circling walk and ended with more hope for the busy week ahead.

The second exhausting week was a little like a disorienting visit to OZ. This Dorothy encountered challenges and many  happy times, including one that gave her a new perspective on the concept of home. 
One of my nieces and her husband had already raised two capable (smart and beautiful) daughters to adulthood when they, in their Christian faith, took the brave risk of adopting two children, one at a time, each about 6 yrs. old when they moved in. 
The little ones had been tossed to and fro by their need for foster care. Not born siblings, this darling girl and adorable boy have found camaraderie in their similar histories, the details of which are too horrifying to describe. For a while now they have been cared for by devoted, wise parents who are gradually helping them to believe that they have truly come home.
Hearing about the past for these little ones and witnessing the beautiful contrast in their present situation, I imagined what they must feel. For most of their lives they lived without the security of a real home, that ideal place where we’re safe and free to be our unveiled selves. Now, every morning, they awoke in their own bedrooms ready for hugs and laughter with their forever family. 

My story here about two weeks of family visits is a shallow comparison to any orphan’s or refugee’s painful saga, but when I finally sank onto mine own little bed in Toronto, I almost wept with relief. Oh, the comfort of familiarity and security. At last I could fully relax. 
Ruby slippers off, I sighed, “There’s no place like home”.


How we hope that Christian belief is right, that life after death will feel like arriving where we belong, at home with the One who unfailingly welcomes us in. 

Tuesday 14 July 2015

So Thirsty!

Oh, the sweet peace of sitting outside, safe and dry under my front porch roof during a gentle summer rain. The neighbourhood gardens are in full July bloom and I feel their gratitude for today’s wet benediction. Lilies, orange, yellow and cabernet-coloured, raise their trumpets to the sprinkling. White phlox stand tall while golden coreopsis bend their long thin stems gracefully beneath the shower’s gentle weight. Pale purple hosta bells bow their heads. Tough lavender bushes revel like children in the rain. After days of hot sun, underground tree roots must be surreptitiously slurping it up the way I do at my kitchen tap on sweaty afternoons.
The air is pleasantly warm, filled with the whispering sound of thousands of droplets hitting green leaves and dusty pavement.

I can’t sit still any longer - I need to write an ode to water. 

One of my personally canonized saints is Canadian Maude Barlow (see Council of Canadians, the only non-charitable organization to which I regularly donate). She is the political prophet who has been sounding the alarm for decades that we are squandering the very God-given substance that keeps us alive. For God’s sake, stop buying bottled water, I beg you. Mark my words, foreign corporations are draining our water table to get your money and drought-stricken Americans are eyeing Canada’s abundant melting glaciers and rainfall. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A week ago I had the honour of paraphrasing to my Texas children one of my favourite bible stories about water. 
I chose the tale of Jesus, hot and tired from desert travel, sitting without a bucket near a deep well. Along came a lone woman, alien in both gender and race. He asked her for a drink. 
She was no dummy. 
Clearly a thoughtful feminist, she replied wryly, “Why would you, a Jewish rabbi, ask me, a lowly Samaritan woman, to fetch you water?”
Jesus, admiring her comeback, replied with an equally provocative comment, “If you knew who I was you’d be asking me for a drink of living water.”
“What? Ask you? Are you better than our ancestors who dug this well? You don’t even have a bucket with you.”

Instead of attacking her for defying his superior male ranking, Jesus, with tender respect, stated a profound spiritual truth, “Anyone who drinks regular water will soon be thirsty again but anyone who chooses to take in what I’m offering will not only have their spiritual thirst quenched but will be so filled with peace and unconditional love that they will feel as if they have a spring inside of them, a fountain of forgiveness and faith in God that never runs dry.”
Again, she was no dummy. 
“Oh Sir, please give me that water!”

Jesus proceeded with a conversation perfectly tailored to this woman’s own situation. In the end she was so convinced that Jesus was God’s answer to all of life’s death-dealing deserts that she spread the astonishing good news to her whole town. 

Sorry, but I just can’t help it. I always read life as its Author's allegory, like a graphic novel that isn’t fiction or fantasy. Gazing with pleasure on today’s lovely rainy gardens, I, too, swell with gratitude for water, both literal and eternal.