Gospel Songs--Why We Need Them

In the last blog we talked about hymns and why we so need them to remind ourselves and each other just who is this God that we serve and what are His unchanging attributes that we can depend on in a undependable world.  Hymns are also songs addressed to God in worship and gratitude for our history with Him.

The other kind of song that we need to sing is the gospel song.  Many great gospel songs have also survived the test of many generations of experience and often we even hear these called “hymns” because they have proven to be so true to our shared experience.  While hymns are “vertical” or God directed, gospel songs are “horizontal” or relational. By that I mean that they are “the word of our testimony”-– each of us telling someone else what God has done in our lives.  These songs are our personal story.

I guess I am cynical enough that when I sit in church and hear both hymns and praise and worship songs telling how awesome God is, I am asking in my mind, “How do you know that?  I have my real and complicated life coming up tomorrow morning, and I have to know how you know that God is awesome, powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent and all the things you are singing about Him.”  

There is nothing so powerful to my fainting heart as a real person saying to me, “This is what happened to me, and this is how I know.”  Like the blind man who was questioned by the sanctimonious doubters, he simply said, “I don’t know whether he’s good or bad.  I only know, once I was blind, but now I see.”

We also need these relational songs because love demands action to be valid.  We don’t read the words of Jesus very long before we hear Him telling us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter to the homeless and “thus fulfill the law of love.”

It is my deep belief that in our worship, both personal and corporate, we need a good balance of hymns and personal testimony songs.  We do overcome by the “blood of the Lamb” and by “the word of our testimony.”  Nothing is as powerful when some cynic shoves us into a corner of “theological nit-picking” than taking two steps away from the belligerent finger-pointing to simply say, “I only know, this happened to me.”

We need both hymns and gospel songs because every vertical commitment will eventually demand a horizontal living out in relationship with those around us.  It is imperative that we know what God says in His living Word and when we gather to worship express our gratitude for all He is, rising above our smallness to embrace His Glory.  We also need to live out what He says in this word, drawing from the great storehouse of His freely offered resources to embrace a hurting world by being what He has called us to be.  The vertical.  The horizontal.  The hymns of praise and great scriptural truths that have withstood the test of experience must be combined with the word of our personal testimony sharing our stories of God at work through us and in us to conform us to the likeness of His Son.  We need to teach both to our children.  Don’t worry that they might not totally understand all the words.  Did you?  Did I? But hymns and spiritual songs that are worth their salt are pieces of portable theology, and they will throw our children a lifeline when experience is pulling them under for the third time.  As with scripture, the meaning of profoundly true songs will become clear when life gets their attention.

The “praise and worship” vs. “gospel songs” argument should never come up!  We need to sing the songs that have outlived us.  We need to sing the songs as new and fresh as this morning’s experience with our neighbor or our children.  We need the songs that remind us that we have a history with God.  We need the songs that sing our testimony as personal as the text of encouragement we just received from a fellow believer.

All must be biblical, beautiful, true, powerful and, yes, personal.  Let’s encourage each other daily, singing hymns and spiritual songs.  Let us never lose our joy and in the chaos of the world, live at rest in Him who is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

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What Are Hymns and Why Do We Need them?

In times of chaos and uncertainty, there always seems to be a return to hymns, so it is not surprising that so many artists, both gospel and secular, have recently released recording projects of hymns.

A hymn is not just an “old song” we used to sing.  In fact, there are many new hymns being written and whole hymn movements of new writers rising up, not only in the U.S. but in the U.K. and Scandinavia.   Then what is a hymn, and why do we need them?

First of all, a hymn is meant to be sung corporately.  When we gather with other Believers, we sing together praise to God or remind each other just who this God is that we serve. In general, we could think of hymns as those songs of praise and worship we send up to God identifying for all to hear His attributes and thanking Him for His amazing intervention in our world and in our lives.  We sing of the incarnation: God who was before anything existed, the Cause and Source of all things, God of grandeur, power and infinite glory chose to become one of us and to walk with us – Immanuel!  Hymns are God-centered and call our attention upward.  They are lofty in message and lift us above the earthy.  They remind us of our original glory that preceded any “original sin” and remind us of God’s intention to see that glory restored in us.  The exchange in hymns, then, is vertical – connecting us to God and seeking to hear His voice speaking to our hearts in return.

Hymns are firmly rooted in God’s Word and, since they are intended to be sung corporately by the fellowship of believers, pull us above our petty differences by reminding us of God’s dream for us – that we would be one.  

Because hymns are intended to reflect the qualities of God, they must have poetry that is beautiful, reverent, simple, accurate, and pure.  The theme of a hymn should be focused and at the same time universal and not sectarian in its truth, drawing together and then upward all the divergent believers to oneness in Him.

There is no more distilled form of writing than the song lyric, and there is no more condensed form of lyric writing that hymn writing.  The thought must be scripturally sound, purely true and without embellishment.  This requires that every word count – every verb, every noun, every conjunction, every adverb or adjective accurate – the perfect choice to convey true meaning so that there is no misunderstanding.  Every skill of the poet’s art must be called into play in hymn writing so that the clarity and beauty, creativity and purity reflect the Maker Himself in its expression. The music, too, must be harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically singable so that congregations can sing it together.

It is equally imperative that the singer or recording artist not take liberties with the words of a hymn. It is not acceptable to embellish or be careless by changing an “at” to “in” or “Father” to fathers or an “and” to a “but”.  Such changes can totally change the meaning and the theology and violate the integrity of the scripture from which the hymn was taken.

Yes, many of the great hymns have been sung literally for centuries, but we do not sing hymns because they are old; we sing them because they are so true that they have survived all the fads of language, rhythm feels, and musical trends.  If new hymns live, it will be for the same reason.

No wonder, then, that when times are confusing or the world is in upheaval, we find ourselves needing songs that nail to the wall the deep cardinal truths of our faith and the always available and ever dependable qualities of God.  When we cannot sing them as a congregation, we sing them to ourselves to help us remember that the Body of Christ is always at the table and the great cloud of witnesses are always present to encourage, love and support.  When we sing hymns alone, we refocus on the ways this great God has delivered us before; this focus turns our anxieties to praise and our questions to certainties.  

I love the promise found in Revelation (12:11) that we would overcome the obstacles of any age “by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony.”  This explains the power we find in hymns—those songs that extol and express praise for the qualities of God and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.  Let’s sing our hearts out in great hymn confirmations of truths that transcend the shifting winds of public opinion and trends of the times. 

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Givers and Takers

Bill’s Grandpa Grover used to say, “There are basically two kinds of people in this world—givers and takers—so decide which one you want to be.”  The longer we live, the more convinced we are that he was right.  There are big-hearted, generous people, and there are clutching, stingy people.

We have also observed that the attitude with which a person approaches life doesn’t seem to have much to do with how much one has.  We’ve seen unselfish, generous poor people, and we’ve seen tight-fisted, grasping rich people.  We’ve seen extravagantly liberal givers who had means, and we’ve seen miserly, greedy poor people who hated everyone who had anything.  It all depends on how we choose to spend the days allotted to us.

Bill’s grandparents, Addie and Burl Hartwell, lived for the joy of giving.  Though they never had much of this world’s goods, it was impossible to get out their door when we went to visit without them thrusting into our hands a head of cabbage, a loaf of freshly baked bread, or a “mess of corn” from the garden for supper.  We wanted to be that kind of givers; we hope that we have taught our children to be givers too.

Maybe one thing the pandemic has taught us all is that we really do need each other.  We have become a little more aware of a neighbor who can’t get out to get groceries, or someone who is stressed by job loss or home schooling or worry about someone they can’t visit.

What could happen if the joy in giving away what we have should be as contagious as Covid-19? Could a new attitude take over the world?  Jesus taught that it could.  He said that sharing our bounty could perfect us.  He said that giving our food to the hungry, something to drink to the thirsty, our hospitality to the overlooked or lonely, our clothing to the destitute, and our care to the sick would make us heirs to God’s Kingdom.  And physical food, water, housing, clothing, and care are just the tip of the iceberg!  What if we were to truly offer food for the soul, water for the shriveled spirit, the shelter of a place to belong, and the covering of encouragement for the raw and exposed heart?

The best anti-depressant to be found is this prescription from the old-timers—and from the Master of Life:

If you want more happy than your heart can hold,
If you wanna stand taller, if the truth were told,
Take whatever you have and give it away!
If you want less lonely and a lot more fun,
And deep satisfaction when the day is done,
Throw your heart wide open and give it away! 

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Love Note to a Teacher

Ione Craig was not just your regular, run-of-the-mill kindergarten teacher.  She defined kindergarten teacher.  And our daughter Suzanne was fortunate enough to have her.  Ione with laughing eyes and smile in her voice made every day an adventure in learning colors or numbers or letters or sounds....

In the fall there was the adventure of gathering leaves of gold and scarlet and orange.  There were gourds and pumpkins to paint and line up around the room and songs about the leaves falling down to sing to the rhythm of shakers and tambourines and triangles. There was the taste of fresh apple cider and caramel corn.

At Christmas there were bells to make and to spell and to ring. There was the wooden nativity to set up and cotton balls to paste onto the beards of the cut-out Santas.  When the big Indiana snows came, there were new words to write and to spell like s-n-o-w and i-c-e and c-o-l-d. There were icicles to cut from white manilla paper and hang from silver cord across the ceiling. There were new ways to fold and cut paper with newly acquired scissor skills that, when unfolded, made magical snowflakes to tape on the big wall of windows that looked out on the drifts of snow outside.

One winter day when I went to pick Suzanne up from school, there were twenty small bumps and one large round bump in the snowy school yard.  Turned out it was Mrs. Craig in her snowmobile suite teaching her kindergarten children to make snow angels in the drifts! 

Then there was the day that Suzanne came out with a big smile on her face, waving a very large sheet of fingerpainting paper. She carefully manipulated the paper into the front seat of my car and said, ‘Mom, we fingerpainted today, and guess what we used for paint—chocolate pudding! Mrs. Craig said we could paint with our fingers or our elbows or even our toes, if we wanted to, as long as we licked it off when we got done!”  I still have that painting in one of the early scrapbooks I kept for Suzanne, and she still grins when she looks at it.

There were days when I wasn’t able to make the school-run, and Bill was on duty. Invariably, it seemed, just as he was leaving for the school an important phone call would come into the office or an interview would run overtime, making him a bit late to get to the pick-up line.  (These were the days before portable cell phones.) By the time he got there, Mrs. Craig had taken Suzanne back inside to wait. About the third time this happened, Suzanne came out with a big note attached to her sweater with a safety pin that said MR. GAITHER on the front.  When Bill unpinned the note and read it, it said.

 Mr. Gaither:
Kindergarten lets out at 11:30. It is very distressing
to your child when you are not here when she gets
out.  I will expect you here at 11:30 from now on.

                          Ione Craig

It didn’t matter to this teacher whether Mr. Gaither was president of the School Board or President of the United States; she expected him to never distress one of her little students again.  When Bill got home that day with our daughter, he said, “What a great teacher!  You have to love a teacher whose top priority is the joy and well-being of her kids.” (You may be sure he was never late again.)

We got to know Ione Craig that year and found there were many iconic stories about her around town from the three generations of students who had her as a teacher.  But the best story was one she told on herself.  She said that by February kindergarteners had learned to write and to spell enough words to write a love note on Valentine’s Day.  They could use scissors well enough to cut out red construction paper hearts and could paste well enough to glue lacey paper doilies to the red hearts to make a pretty Valentine.

So Mrs. Craig’s project the second week of February was for the students to make a Valentine for a very special person in their lives.  To her surprise and delight, one of the little boys came up at the end of the morning and gave his Valentine to his teacher.  Mrs. Craig expressed her gratitude to her student and tucked the treasure into her purse to take home to show her husband.  When they opened the Valentine, it read: 

After reading this, Armond Craig laughed out loud and said, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with the kid’s spelling.  He just can’t count.”

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Puppy Training

We got a new puppy!  We had always been a collie family when our kids were growing up.  We’ve had five collies in all over the years.  We loved their sweet dispositions and the tender care they gave of the children and their friends.  Collies are “herders,” so nothing made them happier than corralling a yard full of children or teen-agers.

As our lives got more complicated though, we decided to not get another dog after we lost our last one, Lord Townsend.  Until now.

With concerts and events cancelled because of Covid-19, and with my decision to travel less and write more, Bill and I decided it was time to get a puppy again, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel.  We learned that this was the favorite breed of Queen Victoria, England’s longest ruling monarch, who was the last of the House of Hanover transitioning into the House of Windsor.  So, we named our puppy Windsor, our transition dog into this new chapter of our lives.  

And what a joy this little guy is! He is sweet and smart like our collies were, but smaller and so easy to train because he so loves to please.  We thought we’d use these months of isolation to teach him, but truth be known, he is teaching us.

He’s teaching us to be consistent and to pay attention to his subtle signals.  He’s teaching us that playing hard is as important as working hard and sleeping well.  He’s reminding us that touching and expressing affection, rewarding and confirming kindnesses are as vital to a relationship as honest confrontation.

And here is the best Windsor-lesson of all!  I accidently stepped on his little toes not realizing he was right under my feet.  Amazingly, as soon as he let out his sharp yelp, he turned and licked my shoe.  He looked up at me as if to say, “I know you didn’t mean it, did you?  We’re still okay, right?” His only response was to forgive and restore our bond.

Wow!  What if that were always my first response to a harsh word, a slight, a hurt?  What if mercy and grace and forgiveness were as natural as the first cry of pain?  What if a healing gesture could rush to fill the moment of conflict?

We thought we were just getting a puppy for the joy of him, but we have gotten a whole lot more, and even at this late date in our relationship, I think Bill and I are loving each other better than ever.  And a puppy shall lead them...

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Keys

I could write my life in keys.  The first key I remember was to the 1878 farm house my parents bought after we moved back from Intercession City, Florida, where daddy had been in Bible College.  I was four.  It was a squarish house that I now know was in the Federalist style of architecture.  It was just down the gravel county road from my grandparent’s small farm outside Burlington, Michigan. There was no inside plumbing or running water, but the house was one of my favorite childhood memories.  The key to the front and back doors was what daddy called a “skeleton key,” I guess because it had a thin back bone, a round head, and notched feet that unlocked the door.

Then there was the key to my grandfather’s 1932 Ford.  That was key to the adventure of running boards, scratchy horsehair upholstery, and put-put-putting down the country roads at the speed of a tortoise.  When my pastor-parents were out of town for a church convention or state board meetings, Grandpa and Grandma would drive into town to pick me up from school.  I sat on the prickly back seat with my chin on the windowsill to watch the farmers plowing the fields or harvesting the crops.  Sometimes a killdeer would limp away to distract us invaders from her eggs that she had literally laid in the edge of the road, where it was hard to tell the gravel from her small spotted eggs.

Daddy and mother had a “wad” of keys.  I always wondered how they knew where they went. Some went to the church and its various doors; some went to not only our parsonage, but to my other grandmother’s mobile home, and my grandparent’s farm house, though they only ever locked the front door to their house.  At the back door was a stoop where there was a bolt that went through a hole in the thick wooden door.  The bolt had a string attached to it with a ring on the end, and the string ran through a wooden block nailed beside the door.  The string with its ring hung in the corner beside the door where grandma propped a mop on its handle so the strands of the mop could hide the bolt string.  We just knew to move the mop, grab the ring and pull; the bolt would slide out of the holes holding the door.  Tight security!

Years later as a budding lyricist, I was to hear a song by Stuart Hamblen, one of the greatest songwriters of all time that had this line:

Each day is a measure on life’s little string;
When reaching its ending, tired eyes will behold
The string tied to the doorlatch of my Father’s house—
One day nearer home.

One Day Nearer Home
Stuart Hamblen
Hamblen Music Company, Inc. (ASCAP)

I knew exactly what that image meant, though Stuart didn’t mention the mop.

I had two treasured keys of my own, too:  the key to my sidewalk skates and a tiny key to a diary I got for my birthday one year.  The diary key was so small that I was afraid I’d lose it, so I kept it tied with a ribbon to my journal.   What I wrote was never very secret-secure.  

Ah, but my precious skate key!  That one I kept on a cord around my neck.  Every recess and noon hour, my friends and I would skate the sidewalks and blacktopped teachers’ parking lot around the school.  Unless there was too much ice and snow, we skated. Skating was our passion!  Skates for sidewalk skating had no boot, then, but clamped onto our saddle shoes; the key closed the clamps until they were tight.  The skates also had a leather strap that buckled into place around our ankles to hold the skates in place. 

Now, many keys later, the keys to my grown-up life hang on a key holder by our back door.  One day when Benjy was small, one of his friends ask him why his parents had so many keys.  “Because they have a lot of keyholes, I guess,” he answered.  I think that is as good an answer as any.  Gates, padlocks, ignitions of cars, trucks, busses, offices, golf carts, guest houses, utility closets, garages—all these have need of keys. Some have been there so long, we’re not sure what they go to, but we’re afraid to throw them away in case the keyhole is still somewhere in our lives.

Hearts and minds and souls have keys, too, and once you discover what that key it is and someone opens up to you, well, you just never throw away that key.  Even though there may be spaces of time and distance when you might not have a chance to use it, you always keep a key and just wait for the day when you get a chance to use it again.

Here are the keys Saint Paul gave us—fruits of the Spirit, he called them. These are well made keys that never stick or get jammed, but open the strongest bolt locks smoothly and without force. These keys have names engraved on them. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. How our locked up relationships need this fistful of keys!

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Home of Your Dreams

We are all at times homesick.  And the home that we long for in our bones has very specific characteristics.  Some of us are fortunate enough to have known a home that had many of those specifics.  Some of us have never had a home like that, but are nonetheless homesick for such a place.  

We know that “home” is peaceful, full of joy, and comfortable – that is, we immediately feel at home in our own skin when we get there.  Most of us think of home as a place where there are wonderful meals around a common table, a place where real conversations happen naturally, where great ideas are exchanged and laughter is easy.

Beauty, too, is a part of “home.”  Good sounds, good smells, good tastes greet us when we walk in the door.  Flowers from the garden, clean linens, a handmade quilt, a piece of art, the morning sun shining through the window, a bowl of fruit, music from the piano or the flute, a candle in the window, all may be a part our idea of “home.”

The home we long for is also known for what is missing.  Ugly words and anger are not what we long for in this home of our dreams.  Discouragement and belittling comments, put-downs and reminders of past failures would never draw us “home.” Home is not cold, empty, lonely, drab, dark or dirty in our dreams. It is not confused by clutter or dampness from a lack of warmth and light. What is the home of your dreams? 

We know that heaven is ultimately the home of our dreams.  But Jesus prayed that God would let His kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.  Could it be that He was praying that we would take seriously the calling of making our homes the kind of place to which we all so long to go “home”?

Could it be that Jesus was praying that more and more we would “get it” while we’re on earth and make our habitat here more like it will be in heaven so that others would be drawn to our homes like we’re all drawn to the hope of going to His home?

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My Heart—Your Bethlehem

Christmas is either an inconvenient outrage or an experience so deeply spiritual that no matter how many impostors—death, divorce, estrangement, loneliness, or broken promises—have violated the holiday itself, there is a deeper thing, a sort of epiphany that converts us year after year from the self-pity of the moment to a “new birth,” of the only Deity who was born crying in the night for us all.

There has hardly been a Christmas, since I was able to perceive Christmas, that hasn’t pulled me into some soul-shaking insight that has become a part of my experience.  The following lyric was one such epiphany. It was the revelation that the God-child must be planted in me, and that I must be as willing as Mary to bear its ballooning dimensions and face whatever scorn or misunderstanding it may take to carry this inception to its final conclusion. In the process I myself will be filled with the wonder of being chosen and bow my heart to worship in awe of something God has caused me to conceive.  I, too, not only must journey to the place my personal history charted for me, but I also must not lose sight of the star as I go; I must believe angels without question.  This birthing of God in me is not just for me, but also for others; and this birthing is not just for others, but also for me.  In the incubation and delivery process, I, too, will be born, and born, and reborn.                                                             

My Heart Would Be Your Bethlehem

My heart would be your Bethlehem,
A shelter for your birth;
My body be your dwelling place, 
A sacred temple on this earth.
By holy intervention, 
An act of the divine;
In union with mortality
Make incarnation mine. 

 My will would bow in wonderment
Struck silent by the awe
Of angel’s visitation 
That wakes my slumbering heart at dawn
With some annunciation 
My soul could magnify;
Begin in me a holy seed 
That I cannot deny.

 My mind would make a pilgrimage
Wherever promise shines;
Illuminate eternal things 
That I might not mistake the sign.
No matter what it costs me –
Be journey long or far,
Oh, may I trade all treasure rare
For following your star.

 My heart, my will, my mind, my all
I consecrate to bring
The holy Son of God to earth,
Oh, let the angels sing!

This Christmas I wish for you a fresh life-molding epiphany!  May the Incarnation be much more than a sweet story, but a personal recommitment to let this God who reaches for us be incubated in us and delivered to the world, no matter the cost. The cost may get greater as history unfolds, but our very souls must be His dwelling place and His message of transforming love our life force.

Lyric: Gloria Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither and J.D. Miller
© 1991 Gaither Music Company,
Life Gate Music and Lojon Music

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Come See

When asked, “Where is Alexandria, Indiana?”  Bill and I usually reply: “Right in the middle of the cornfields.”  This is true.  Our small town is not only surrounded by fields of corn, soybeans and wheat, it is in the middle of the state that is surrounded by Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.  Beyond Illinois are Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.  Together we are known as the “breadbasket of the world.”  

Like most Midwestern young people, the kids in Alexandria have parents who grew up on working farms, and even though not so many farms are active as they once were, most county and small town kids still belong to a great organization called 4-H where life skills are taught like sewing, canning, baking, woodworking, model-building, and raising farm animals.

The country 4-H fair is held in our own Beulah Park every July where the work of these young people is judged and the prize livestock is auctioned for top dollar.  Restaurants in our area proudly advertise that their gourmet establishment serves the winning blue ribbon beef, pork or poultry.

Alexandria is a good place to live because of solid farm families who would still set an extra place at the table if you happen in at suppertime, pull your car out of a snowdrift in the winter with their tractor, or water and feed your dog while you are on vacation.  A few of the country places around small towns like ours have turned the extra space in their big houses into Bed and Breakfast Inns since the kids are grown and gone.

 So it isn’t hard for Bill and me to imagine an innkeeper taking in extra people in a town too small for big hotels.  And feeding them, too. It isn’t hard to imagine how bad the farmer and his wife must have felt when, in spite of their “no vacancy” sign, a weary man and an about-to-deliver pregnant girl knocked at the door.

“Every bed the house is full,” he must have said before he noticed the grimace on the face of the young woman.  “Why, Joe,” his wife must have said, “that girl’s in labor.  We can’t let that baby be born in the street.”

“Here.  Tell you what we’ll do,” the farmer must have offered.  “Come on around to the stable.  There’s new straw to throw down, and we’ll make a place where you’ll have some privacy.  Maud, here, will bring you some hot water and linens; they’re worn, but they’re clean.  You can tie your donkey under the overhang.”

Because of that one little clause in Luke’s gospel “because there was no room for them in the inn,” these innkeepers have sometimes gotten a bad rap.  But knowing farmers as we do, I think these people went out of their way to give this couple the only other shelter they had.  Can you imagine their surprise as the night wore on?  Stars stopping over their stable, shepherds making a ruckus about angels singing on the hillside, and then, strangers inquiring about the newborn for weeks afterward.

They’d seen a lot of births in their time.  Farmers tend to take such things in stride.  But this was no ordinary birthing.  These country folk must have had quite a story to share that night and the next few weeks at the Farm Bureau meeting.

All too often, we turn the characters in this real-life drama into celebrities or deities.  There was only one deity there that night.  The rest were ordinary people experiencing an extraordinary happening.  But at the time, they all did the best they could with what they had:  some swaddling clothes Mary had no doubt brought with her, a feeding trough turned baby cradle; a rough cloak or two, some clean straw and a stable made warm enough for a newborn by the body heat of some farm animals. 

The rest is history…and prophesy.

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It's a Marathon

When I was in elementary school, we had what was called Field Day.  The whole school was involved, and we could sign up ahead of time for the field event for which we felt most suited.  There were standing broad jump, running broad jump, the high jump, the discus throw, a relay race, and the 100 yard dash.  

I wasn’t very athletic.  I couldn’t even throw a softball well enough to make girl’s village summer team, so discus throwing was out of my league entirely, and only tall girls with long legs seemed to excel at the 100 yard dash. So, I always tried the running broad jump and the high jump.  For the broad jump, someone stood at the side of the sawdust pit to mark and measure how far from the jumping line the contestant landed.  More graceful, stronger kids always beat me in that one.

The high jump was performed by jumping over a cane pole, resting on pegs in two parallel vertical posts.  The slightest touch would dislodge the pole.  The object was to get a running start, then hurl one’s body over the pole.  Each successful try was followed by the official moving the pole up one increment on the posts.  The long, lean type was always superior to me in that event.

You can understand, then, why the metaphor of a race has not been the scriptural comparison to most inspire me.  A wave of fifth-grade nausea always seemed to rise in my stomach whenever I read Hebrews 12 and felt Paul start in on me as a runner, and the spiritual journey as a Field Day.

But now that I am older and wiser, I am coming to believe that the race so often referred to in the Bible is not a 100-yard dash or a broad jump (running or standing) or a high jump or discus throw.  I don’t believe that these verses are even about competing or winning.  The race, I am discovering, is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and the object of this life event is to endure and finish!

It doesn’t matter whether I run, jog, or eventually manage to drag my pulsating, throbbing body over the finish line.  The point is to finish, and get there without giving up.  I’m coming to see that whenever I think I can’t go another inch, there is a support team running alongside to catch me when my knees buckle.  There are fans in the bleachers all along the well-planned and chosen course that have long since found this race possible by finishing it themselves.  At every bend in the track, there they are, cheering and encouraging at the top of their lungs.  “Yes! Yes, you can! You can make it!”  In the Body of Christ, that’s what friends are for.

And I am finally coming to know that endurance is what the Coach is after. He’s not interested in spurts of flashy athletic prowess.  He isn’t impressed by sleek bodies, rippling muscles, or perfect form.  It’s commitment   and determination He adores. It’s the earnest, passionate pursuit of the goal that makes Him proud—staying the course, keeping the faith, and enjoying the journey.

The trophy for this event is engraved not with “First Place Winner” or “Most Valuable Player,” but with “Faithful to the End.” I, even I, can sign up with confidence for that. I may not be good, but I can be stubbornly and joyfully persistent to the end.

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A New Thanksgiving

This is the 54th Thanksgiving we have spent in the house we built when Bill and I were teaching high school English.  Our house has always been the Thanksgiving place. We have enjoyed gatherings of 40 and more from both sides of our family. Bill’s parents and my parents have been a part of this gathering along with my sister and her family and Bill’s siblings and their children.  

As the older generation has left our family circle, their spirits have not. They all continued to be a part of our celebration of gratitude, as we retold to each new generation the stories each of the patriarchs and matriarchs made famous.

Always a part of Thanksgiving, too, has been single parents and their children, our kids’ college friends who could not go home for the short holiday because they were from other countries or states too far away, and friends who no longer had family in the area. The families of our grown children’s spouses have been a delightful part of our celebration, as well. So lots of cousins, friends, grandkids, and drop-in guests have formed teams for driveway basketball, music bands, and groups for harmonizing. Fortunately, we always had guitarists, bass players, drummers and keyboardists in our circle who shared a repertoire of pop songs, gospel tunes, and 80s rock classics.

The center of our Thanksgiving, however, has always been the sharing of the Indian corn. The youngest child had the honor of passing a little turkey-shaped basket filled with kernels of Indian corn to everyone gathered around our farm kitchen. Then I am usually the one to tell the story of the 102 passengers and 30 crew who set sail for a 66 day trip across the rough Atlantic in a ship called the Mayflower. That first winter took almost half of their lives as provisions dwindled and disease took its toll.  

It was friendly native Americans who, come spring, taught the remnant of survivors to plant crops that would grow in the new land: corn, beans, squash and herbs. About 40 of these first “pilgrims” were separatists who were seeking freedom to worship away from the state-run religions. Others of the group were secularists who came for adventure, prosperity, or a fresh start in a new land. That first harvest and the game and fish from the new land became the first day of feasting, games, and music in gratitude for not only the harvest, but life itself.

Often, we read aloud the poem by Felicia Doretha Hemans “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.” As the little basket is passed again, each person drops a kernel of corn into it, and he or she tells what they are most thankful for since we were gathered in this circle last year. Every year for 54 years the year has brought joy, pain, breakthroughs, some losses, and many years a new baby. The privilege of expressing to each other our gratitude for someone’s kindness, someone’s support, someone’s encouragement, someone’s forgiveness is an unforgettable moment.  

This simple tradition makes us all so glad to be alive, to be together, and to be so blessed by the delicious spread on our kitchen island, groaning with the everyone’s special contribution to the feast.

This year this traditional celebration will not happen for our family and for many other families across this great land. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bill and I wrote a letter to our loved ones, telling them that we won’t be gathering in this great old house this year. We sent a big puzzle to each family, looking forward to a time when we can once again spread the puzzle pieces across our cleared dining room table and make together a grand scene that can never be complete without each person’s pieces.

But not being able to carve a turkey together cannot keep us from being grateful. It cannot cancel the memories we’ve shared or the music we’ve made, or the crafts we’ve created together after dinner is cleared away. It cannot silence the voices of our elders who have put so much into our family DNA, nor cancel the greater impact of their teaching, prayers, and life-skills they’ve built into us all by example, humor, and hard work.

I look at the history of our country and the years since that first Thanksgiving, and have to admit that, like most big families, our nation has made some mistakes and have at times hurt each other and been anything but Christ-like to each other. But even so, I know how to say “thank you,” as our daughter Suzanne and her husband Barry wrote in their song. And one thing for which I am most thankful is that our loving Lord deals with us all not just with justice but with mercy and grace. May all families grant these holy gifts to each other.

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In Honor of Henry Slaughter

In the 60s when I first joined Bill and Danny as part of the Bill Gaither Trio, we traveled with Doug Oldham and Henry and Hazel Slaughter, giving concerts in churches and auditoriums across the country.  The friendships cemented then were to last a lifetime.

Hazel and Henry shared our December 22nd wedding anniversary, so there was hardly a year for forty years or so when we missed exchanging bouquets of Christmas red roses.  Many years Henry and Hazel stopped by our place in Indiana for lunch or dinner on their way to Ohio to spend Christmas with their daughter Amanda and her family.  We kept in touch in other ways, too—dinner when we were in Nashville, phone calls, and notes back and forth.

Henry and Hazel were often in the group of singers that came to be known as the Homecoming Artist whenever there was a videotaping.

But on Nov. 13, we had to say good-bye to our long-term friend, Henry Slaughter.  It didn’t seem possible that this bright, social, positive man could have been 93 years old.  One of the most outstanding keyboardists in gospel music, Henry was also an arranger, songwriter, and creator of a layman’s piano course that taught many an aspiring piano student to be an accomplished church accompanist.

Before the years Henry and Hazel spent performing as a well-known husband-wife duet, Henry was the pianist for the Weatherford Quartet and the original accompanist and arranger for the innovative Imperials, a group that set a new standard of excellence in gospel music.

Henry grew up on a farm in North Carolina, and despite his five Dove Awards and great piano accomplishments, he remained humble, self-effacing, and totally fulfilled by just playing his part.

A few years back, we did a special tribute honoring Henry in the Homecoming Magazine.  He wrote Bill a note right away, overwhelmed by the salute.  He wrote to Bill, “I appreciate the honor, but I really didn’t do that much.  All I ever wanted to do was to play in the band, write a few songs, and sing in the choir.”

Well, a songwriter doesn’t let a “hook” like that fly by without catching it!  Bill called Larry Gatlin, who also admired Henry, and said, “Larry, if this isn’t the theme of a great song, I’ve missed my calling!”

In a few days, Larry and Bill met in Nashville to write Henry’s song, and they were proud to have him credited as a part of a three-part songwriting team.  The song was recorded by the Booth Brothers and performed by them on the Vocal Band’s next videotaping, Pure and Simple.  Henry was in the audience and beamed like a proud papa at the song that is perhaps the best statement of this great, humble man that might ever be written.  

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What Time is It?

Clocks of every kind fill every nook and cranny of every home.  Most homes have some kind of time piece in every room, and most of the people who live in those rooms have the current time displayed on smart watches and cellphones for any region in the world.  We are a time-driven people; we are obsessive about checking the time. Cell phones lord it over our every waking moment. Ovens, microwaves, bedside digital clocks flash the time all day and all night.  Décor clocks make statements on every wall and hallway. The tyranny of time!

But I long for timepieces that mean something.  My father, a pastor of small churches all his life, always wanted a grandfather clock.  He and Mother saved for years to finally get one for each other one year for Christmas.  Our children remember the ritual they had of winding it on Sunday each week and loved the comforting sound of it when they spent weekends at their house while we were out on the road singing.  Benjy and Melody now have that clock in the corner of their piano room.  Its music is now part of the natural habitat of their children who take for granted the sound of the chimes that mark the hours as they pass. They wind their clock on Sunday, just as their great grandparents did all those years when their parents were growing up. 

Bill and I, too, have a grandfather clock, given to us as a very special Christmas gift from those who worked with us to publish and send out our music.  It’s a real presence in our family room.  I, too, wind it on Sunday.

At our cabin in the woods where I go to write is a clock that looks like a china dinner plate.  I keep it because it was given to us years ago by Dino and Cheryl Kartsonakis; I think of them when I see it.  And the crystal clock in our living room was actually a very special award given to us by ASCAP in New York, while the one on our roll-top desk was a gift from Anderson University for just that spot next to the antique writing pens and bottles of old-fashioned ink.

The Christmas he was one year old, I gave to our grandson Liam a clock that looked like “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie”.  He loved it when I sang “Sing a Song of Six-pence” to him, so this clock from the famous Indiana artist FB Fogg found a place in his nursery.

Our daughter Amy and her husband Andrew once had a little place in the woods in quaint Brown County, Indiana.  Amy is the one in our family that was always at war with time and hated schedules that overruled the inclinations of her heart, so when I asked her what they would like for their cottage she said, “I want clocks that don’t work or have no hands.  I want a collection of them on the wall.  That will be the one place where our family can lose track of time!”

Don’t you have to just love that?  

Well, I loved it, too!  So when we were in Carmel, California, on vacation, I discovered in a lovely French country shop a dainty bracelet made of thin gold and silver faces of antique watches.  I just couldn’t resist it.  It had Amy’s name all over it!  We gave it to her for her birthday. None of the hands move on these tiny watch faces—Amy’s kind of timepiece.

When Benjy was a teen-ager, he asked me to listen to part of an album by the Canadian rock group Triumph. On it was a brilliant musical study called “Time Canon,” a trilogy of songs about time.  The first was a cut called “Time Goes By”.  There was a cut called “Killing Time”, which, if I recall, was a song about the young who think they have all the time in the world to kill.  But gradually, there is a turn in the trilogy and the meaning of “killing” turns from a lighthearted comment about killing time into an adjective meaning time that kills!  Loneliness and too much time becomes lethal, killing the soul. Unforgettable. 

 I think of that trilogy of songs now that social distancing, too much time alone, and isolation from the happy interaction of family gatherings become a strange new norm.  People were not meant to be alone.  Children need children, squealing down the hillside.  Families need to be crammed around tables, sharing turkey and pumpkin pie, telling the hilarious stories to the new generation, laughing their heads off together. We need each other!

I think again about the two kinds of time:  Chronos and Kairos. The first is earth time, the kind of time that schedules are built on, the kind of time that runs our lives and keeps up the pressure and causes the wheels of commerce to turn with relentless urgency.  Any chronological time-keeping is the product of this earth and its value system. Chronos gets us to work and to school and to church and sets the framework of our days.

Then there is God’s time.  Amazing how something like a worldwide pandemic can stop down what we all thought was totally essential, and make us reconsider what is vitally important after all. God’s time, Kairos, is eternal and not the victim of earth’s systems, values, or pressures.  I am coming to believe that it may be our mission on this earth to turn what Chronos time we have here in this life into something eternal—to make something “Kairos” out of the hours of time we are given on this earth, something that will transcend time and space and go on after time and space shall end.

And I visit the clocks of my life again.  It is more than their ability to tell me what time it is; it is to remind me the value of the moments we have.  It is Liam winding my parents grandfather clock on Sunday because it matters.  It is making conscious note that Sunday isn’t just another day to be driven by our cell phones.  It is the day to make something of the time, put some eternity in it by the way we dish up the pot roast after worship and have that lingering conversation with the teen-agers and the little ones, and the old ones, and the usually-too-busy-ones and the college students who know more right now than they will ever know again in their lives.  It is listening—and seeing in everyone’s insight a kernel of truth and that is a treasure we may not have recognized before.  And it is that “something,” that Kairos sitting right here in the middle of our Chronos—right here in this moment on this planet at this time with these people we love, barely aware that the clock is chiming away marking something, well, timeless!

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The Song and the Sword

I have a file four inches thick in my office called “THE SONG THAT BROUGHT ME HOME.”  It is full of letters people have written us over the years telling of the power of a song to break through the maze of the mind, when nothing else would, to turn lives around and bring hearts back home.  Some day I hope to turn that folder into a book.

Most of us have our own stories, stories of how deaf we were to lectures and arguments, no matter how true or logical, and how love managed to throw us a life-line floating on the wings of a song or poem, painting, or story that by-passed all steel-trap excuses and went straight to the wound in the soul.

It was the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton who put in the voice of the Cardinal, a character in his 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy these words:

True, This—
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword.  Behold
The arch-enchanters wand!—itself is nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless!—Take away the sword.

Ah!  The power of words over the machinery of war!  This quote brings to mind a sentence burned deep into a piece of barn wood on our entry gate that has been attributed to Plato and others:  “Let me write the songs of a nation; I care not who writes its laws.”

It occurs to me that the list of life-lessons (Proverbs) and the love poem (Song of Solomon) of the wise Solomon and the songs of David (the Psalms) have outlasted most constitutions and articles of government.  The Psalms continue to sing their way into the lives of our children and our children’s children, and most of us have laid our old folks to rest reciting and singing their eternal truths.

When Bill and I taught high school English, we loved to have the students learn the poem of Longfellow entitled “The Arrow and the Song,” comparing the speed and accuracy of an arrow to that of a song.  The poem ends with this stanza:

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song from beginning to end
I found again in the heart of a friend.

How effective and long-lasting is the marriage of a great message and the perfect music when they are both beautiful and true.

Some historians and anthropologists theorize that music evolved rather late.  This has to be the case if they also believe that human beings evolved from primitive life forms that could only grunt and groan to communicate their basic needs.  But philosophers and thinkers like J. R. R.  Tolkien (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings) and C. S. Lewis (Narnia, Mere Christianity, The Four Loves, Screwtape Letters) believe that not only did music come first but that it was His song, sung into the void, that created the earth and everything in it. Many physicists now are finding evidence that the originator of all matter is the vibrating sound wave and that the Big Bang had to be a sound.  Could it possibly have been with a song God sang all things into existence?  Could it be that it was the song that departed when man decided to play God, and God wrote “Ichabod” over the doorpost of mankind?  Was it the absence of the song that confused communication after the Tower of Babel? And was it to return the song to our lives that Jesus came and the angels sang?

When we see what is happening to our ability to communicate with each other on a deep and meaningful level, we might be concerned that what started with music and the Song of God (the Word) might end up with grunts and groans.

Church, we must keep singing!  We must sing the deep, pure, clear song of Jesus and sing it with great joy!  Perhaps Bob Benson best explained why in this beautiful piece:

There has to be a song—
There are too many dark nights,
Too many troublesome days,
Too many wearisome miles,
There has to be a song—
To make our burdens bearable,
To make our hopes believable,
To release the chains of past defeats,
Somewhere—down deep in a forgotten corner of each one’s heart—
There has to be a song—
Like a cool, clear drink of water
Like the gentle warmth of sunshine,  
Like the tender love of a child,
There has to be a song.

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Mother's Notes

My mother used to leave notes on things: the kitchen counter the steering wheel of the car, the bathroom mirror.  She also left notes in public places like the picnic tables at roadside parks when she had found an unusual plant she thought the next tourist might enjoy, or when by chance she and my father had missed someone they had hoped to meet.

More than once, I have found notes on restaurant doors telling me that the plan had changed for some reason and the party was going to happen some place else.  She once left a torn piece of notebook paper tacked to the doorframe at Olive Garden with a needle (thread still attached) she always kept in her purse.

   Gloria and Kids,
Bill and Daddy decided they wanted Mexican. Meet us at Chi-chi’s.
Love,
Mother

Often, when our children were little, mother would travel with us.  When we had to be gone on long trips – like the tour up the west coast that lasted two weeks – mother would take the children out of school on Friday and fly to where we were for the middle long weekend in between.  We tried to do something special with the kids during these times to help them learn about the history or the uniqueness of the geographical area we were in.  One of our yearly venues was the Anaheim Convention Center in the Los Angeles area which is very close to Disney Land.

While there, Mother and I took all three of the children to the park, but because two of them were so small, Mother walked the babies in the stroller so I could take Suzanne on some rides safe only for older children.  The afternoon wore on and the little ones got tired and fussy.  When Suzanne and I tried to find Mother and the little ones, they were no where to be seen.  We went back to the entrance gate in an effort to catch sight of them.  Suddenly, Suzanne looked toward the tall hedge separating the park from the parking lot.

“Look!” she said. “I think I see a note on that hedge.  No one would leave a note but Grandma.”  Sure enough, when we got close enough, we could see that someone had stabbed a piece of paper on to one of the sticks on the hedge:

        The babies got tired, and I’ve run out of spiz;
We’ve gone on back to the hotel to take naps.
Love,
Mother

Not long ago I was talking to Ivan Parker.  He was telling me about a sermon he’d heard an evangelist preach about the crossing place between this life and the next.  The preacher had made the point that no matter who we are in this life, no matter what we’ve accomplished or how much we’ve failed, whether we are known or unknown, death is the great leveler, and we all cross the river at the same place.
That imagery made me think about Mother and her notes.  And I got to wondering, since she’s already made the crossing, what notes she might have left for us there?  Knowing her, she certainly tacked a scrap of something to a tree by the river.

I’ve run out of energy, so I’ve gone on home, I can imagine her writing.  Come as soon as you can and bring the children with you.  Find me when you get here.
Mother

What if other sojourners who have finished this race would happen to leave us notes?  What would they say on the remnants of life they left nailed to a tree?

  Relax. The just do live by faith. Cross with confidence.
Martin Luther

Will there be one that reads?

Take time to be holy. 
The way of the cross leads home. 
John Wesley

What if Vestel Goodman left a note with one of her famous lace hankies that said:

I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey now!
Love ya, darlin’; Vestal

 Or maybe?

 To God be the glory!  I’m praising my Savior for such a blessed assurance; Jesus is mine.  And yours, too.  
Fanny Crosby
P.S.  I can see!

 Or perhaps one that says:

 Secure in His arms.
John Calvin

I keep thinking about what I’d most like to say to those coming behind me, should I make the crossing first.  What message would I tie to a reed or roll up and wedge in the crotch of a tree for my kids or my sweet husband or my friends to find as they near the place.  Maybe I’d write on a scrap from a yellow legal pad:

Something beautiful!
More beautiful than we ever imagined.
Find me just north of the “Welcome Home” banner
somewhere by the water. 
You are loved!
Gloria

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Repurposed Love Song

It was just over two years ago that I posted my first blog.  Now 116 blogs later, so many of you have joined the long parade of faithful readers who have responded with your comments and stories and have shared the blog with friends and family when something I wrote brought them to mind.

Probably most of you have no idea why I started writing in this new form for me, or why I called it LOVE SONG TO MY LIFE.  So, I will stop midstream to refresh my purpose for myself and for you who have signed on since.

When we are living our lives at breakneck speed, juggling many roles and making schedules that would have sent our parents to the psych ward (sent some of us there, too!) we don’t notice so many of the true treasures that whirl by because we are viewing them from a carrousel.  Oh, we know they are there and maybe utter an obligatory prayer of thanksgiving in church or when we tuck the kids in at night--sometimes we even write a thank you note for some friend’s kind gesture--but most of the time, we’re just lucky to make it from morning to night without dropping some ball.

Maybe I felt an urgency to gather some moments into my conscientious focus because I sensed a slowing down time coming like a child spinning in a circle does just before she gets too dizzy to stand up and realizes the sidewalk is coming up to crack her head.

For whatever reason, what has transpired in the two years and 115 blogs since I started would never have been believed. A very contagious virus has brought our country and the rest of the world to a screeching halt.  If someone had said to any one of us, “You need to just quit traveling, cancel your social and professional calendar, stop going to the office and church and school, do work and education from your bedroom computer, close down playgrounds and vacation spots, quit flying and shopping and having lunch with friends or business contacts,”  we would have all answered in international unison, “NO WAY!”

But stop down we did, some of us for eternity as we have buried, mostly without funerals, 200,000 Americans.  This has gotten our attention! The rest of us have had to totally rethink how we do life.

Bill said yesterday after our coffee, in our what’s-on-for-today time: “The bad thing is that I don’t have anything I have to do today.”  Then he paused before going on.  “And the good thing is that there is nothing I have to do today.”

We are songwriters.  I am a lyricist.  I’ve been writing the words to music for more than fifty-five years.  I started the blog because of a lyric I wrote to not-yet-existing music.  I wasn’t sure it was a song at all, but I gave the “poem” to Dony McGuire and said, “I don’t know whether this can have music.  It may be a poem, and it may just be for me.”

I only knew it was the passion of my life to not miss the miracles of every morning, to see the love letters God has been writing to me with every sunrise and every drop of rain poised on the trumpet edge of the morning glory blossom before it drops to water the black earth.  And to write back.  To somehow register that “I got the post, Father; I got it!”

Good days and hard days, my life has been a correspondence with my Maker.  Bill and I have written our life together in songs.  If you were to lay our songs end-to-end for the last almost 60 years, you would have the only biography I may ever write.  These are milestones of my journey.

And, also, like the series of pieces I wrote to settle the doubts of my soul, only to discover that they were written in response to Someone who was talking to me when I wasn’t talking to Him, and I had to admit that these were Simple Prayers, these pieces called a blog were love songs—love songs to my life.

So, I stop here midstream, as I said, to let you hear again the strange poem, now with the music Dony sent back to me, sung by the divine voice of his and Reba’s daughter Destiny.  Please read your own story into these words and music. The good thing that has come from being “sheltered in place” with my husband and our life in our old house on our hillside is that what we “have to do today” is to pay attention, to notice, and to read the love notes scattered everywhere from our Father.  And I will write back, too.  These are--and will continue to be--the lived-out love songs to my life.

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Nature's Grace

The yard is a hundred shades of green with punctuation marks of red geraniums, climbing pink hydrangeas, and golden black-eyed-susans. Along the porch edge the yellow marigolds, orange impatiens, and red-orange geraniums smile up between the white petunias and blue lobelias. The clematis vines have climbed to the upstairs porch where they are blooming away in orchid-pink stars.

The layers of green on the hillside are starting to look like I had hoped they would. The hundred-foot white pine that was shaved on one side by an ice storm two decades ago has become a dark backdrop for the dogwoods and redbuds we planted to hide the missing branches. Smokey-gray lichen dot the bark of the pine giving character to the once-ravaged trunk. The beautiful weeping redbud my sister and her husband gave us years ago now looks like a fine lady’s green umbrella of perfect leaves layered like a swan’s down fan. Last spring before leaves, the umbrella was solid pink blossoms.

Beyond the layered pine and dogwood and redbuds is the dark, dark green rounded beauty of the “oak bush”. Yes, I know there is typically no such thing, but a few summers ago our stately oak was diseased and died. We had the tree cutters saw it down, and, like always, I asked them to leave me a tall stump that I could use as a pillar to hold a big planter of geraniums and trailing sweet potato vines.

Much to our surprise, the “dead” oak stump began send out green shoots! We had seen willows do this, but never a hardwood like an oak. We have watched now for several years as our oak stump turned into what we now call our oak “bush”. It is now a 20 feet tall and perfectly shaped tree. We tell our porch guests to look closely, for if they do, they will see the thick stump of our old oak tree, now almost totally camouflaged by thick new branches reaching like children around the stump to grasp hands as they dance in the breeze. I sit here this morning marveling at what God can do with the seeming tragedies of nature.

We, too, have whole parts of us that have been sheared off by the ice storms or cut down entirely, leaving us despairing because we thought that part of our once tender hearts was dead. Sometimes we, too, have tried to hide the gash or the stump with some fast-growing blooms or repurpose what was left and make do. But, lo! Something new was sprouting from a deep root! And look there, how we were surrounded and healed by the flowering beauty of others who came along side to cover our wounds and bloom away while we healed and found a new role. Hope! Insistent hope!

Farther down the hillside from the redeemed pine and the oak bush is another old stump, this one of a huge willow that was toppled by a windstorm. Willows are more brittle, and while they can bend to most spring winds, they are more easily broken by twisters. Again, we had to cut this tree below the break. It stood for many years, sort of rotting away on the inside leaving a jagged circumference. Ants and other insects gradually reduced the core to sawdust. One day, headed to the creek for a cook-out, we noticed a sprout in the middle of the decaying stump. By the end of the summer, we could tell the sprout was a mulberry. This year, nourished and shelter by the old willow wood, the sprout is well on its way to being a strong mulberry tree that will furnish a good crop of food for the dozens of bird species that make our land their home. These are the same cardinals, finches, warblers, wrens, martins and cedar wax wings that sing to us from the old white pine and the oak bush while the sun is setting to the west of our front porch.

Eventually, for all trees and people, there will be an end of our time on this good earth. But the end is not the end. There is an “after that.” The seeds of the willow catkins in the spring and the pinecones and acorns in autumn will take root somewhere for a crop of new sprouts. And even the core of an old tree will prove to be fertile soil for something fresh and green.

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Home is Portable

If there’s anything I’ve learned over our years of making home, it is that home is portable.  Home is anywhere our family is together.  For us “home” has been not only in our house on the hill, but in hotel rooms, on busses, in sports team arena locker rooms, auditorium dressing rooms, and sometimes in church Sunday School rooms or Pastors’ offices.  I have made “home” in cottages at lakesides, cabins in the woods, and rental condos by the ocean.

My friend Peggy Benson taught me that seasoned travelers do not “travel light” if you’re a homemaker.  When our kids were small, it was Peg who told me, “You can check two suitcases as easily as one.” Of course, that was when there were not the current limits on luggage. When our families vacationed together, I would find our kids drawn to Peggy’s room.  When I went to find out why, I would discover that Peggy had made noodle soup in her hot pot, wrapped the children in a homemade throw or quilt, and had, in general, created a comfort zone in the Benson hotel room.  Little did I know then how valuable her example would be!

Given any space that is ours for a time, I have learned to light a travel candle, put a favorite throw over the end of the bed (cashmere throws from Williams Sonoma take almost no room to pack yet are super soft and warm), add some flowers (roadside thistles and Queen Anne’s Lace will do) and make a hot cup of Earl Grey tea (my favorite teas are from Tea Forté). 

One of my favorite travel tuck-a-ways are clear-vinyl vases (Wonder Vase), that store flat and fold out to hold a bouquet of prairie grasses or blue roadside chicory, wild daisies or orange daylilies.

Small embroidered linen guest towels spread over a hotel table give a simple but lovely setting for a couple of small antique books of English poetry and a picture of important loved ones framed in silk travel-frames.

I try to tuck in a game or two as a motivation for conversation.  Travel Scrabble and Backgammon make a great alternative to T.V. after a day on the road…or on the beach.

I am usually responsible for decorating our home-away-from-home--our tour bus.  I choose a pallet that is both light (to give the illusion of more space) and warm.  Our present bus takes its color cues from nature: warm browns, russet, and creams with accents of robin’s egg blue.  Pillows, soft throws, and subtle lighting seem to invite those who travel to put up their feet, lie back and enjoy a good cup of coffee.  A coffee pot, a refrigerator stocked with good-for-you snacks, a cupboard full of organic cereals, and a bowl of fresh fruit on the table make this as near to home as it gets on the road.

If I have my way, there are always plenty of great books to read and a good collection of classical and other instrumental music to comb the tangles from our stressed-out psyches and provide food for the soul.

We have also taken our grandkids on bus week-ends, and what a time we had!  We played games, made art projects, ate snacks and did homework.  We had long conversations about everything from girlfriends and playground competitions to aspirations for the future.  In short, we spent the week-end “at home”. 

We have learned that home is wherever we can be together. Home is “building a nest” where we happen to be, in a hotel, on the bus, in a rented vacation space, or in a tent in the woods.  Home is making memories together—on purpose.  Home is as portable, well, as love.

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Aluminum Tumblers

Last week I sent for a set of aluminum tumblers.  I admit the motivation was mainly nostalgic; my grandmother had a set of these colorful glasses, and so did my mother.  But another reason I wanted to find a set was deeper than that.

I was born in the March after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941.  I don’t remember World War II, but my uncle served in that war and was wounded in New Guinea. About every family we knew had some family wound from the war.

But I do remember having to have government stamps to buy gasoline.  I remember what we called “butter” was really Oleo, a white shortening like Crisco to which we added a tablet of yellow coloring (like the tablets for coloring Easter eggs) that we mixed into the shortening to look like butter.

I remember that my beautiful mother wasn’t able to buy sheer hosiery, and that we had to peel the foil attached to our gum wrappers to use to cover the cardboard cut-out shapes of bells, stars, and pine trees for trimming our Christmas tree.  We saved the Gold Stamps and S & H Green Stamps we got when mother or daddy bought groceries or gas until we had enough to fill stamp-books we traded for a new toaster or a tricycle.  Metal was used for the “war effort”, because evidently we were pounding plow shears into swords (or guns or tanks or airplanes).

We did all this saving and scrimping because a mad terrorist dictator and several other madmen were eating their way across Europe and the United Kingdom intent on taking over the world and destroying every democracy where people had a voice enough to insist on personal liberties.

When the war was finally over and the allied countries got a chance to begin the long process of rebuilding, we were finally able to get things like fine fabrics and metals.  One of the easiest metals to access was aluminum because it is the most widespread metal on earth (more than 8% of the earth’s core mass) and the third most common chemical element  (after oxygen and silicon).  Coating alloys of this common metal made it safe to use, and families were drawn to glasses and bowls made of this metal, maybe because metals had been so scarce.

Coated cookware of aluminum became available, too, and my mother had for years an incredible “waterless” cookware set called Miracle Maid. I had a set of my own when Bill and I got married and still have it at our log cabin in the woods.

But as a little kid I was drawn to the tumblers because of their bright colors and shiny metallic surfaces.  I loved that they would keep iced drinks (cherry Kool-Aid) cold, and cool my hot summer hands, too. After the drab years of the war when the world was building back and trying to flourish again, I felt like a princess holding these ice-filled sparkling tumblers of hot pink, blue, purple and yellow!

A few years ago, I found colorful ice cream dishes made of this metal, but it was just this week that I got delivered to our door this set of the tumblers of my childhood.  I love them!  And because of the shortages of the war years, I will never take for granted the resources we have now at every turn:  copper pots and pans, multi-layered cookware, yards of aluminum foil for grilling and wrapping, bins full of nails and bolts in every size, pewter candle sticks and decorative pieces....

We have buildings and bridges built of steel girders that hold tons of vehicles of transportation and metals so fine they can be pressed into the thinness of a fingernail are easy to take for granted.  I study the discoveries and inventions of new metals and alloys that can handle the smallest and finest of jobs.  I don’t know why they all work, but I will never forget the days when we had to save the foil from our gum wrappers.  I will tell my story to my grandkids who will smile politely and drink lemonade from these jewel-toned tumblers and never understand why they are so precious to me.

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Late Bloomers

We had a storm they called a derecho, a straight wind storm without an eye.  We are used to tornadoes in the Midwest, but this was more like a hurricane, only over land.  The next morning revealed that we had lost four trees or big chunks of them, and many limbs were strewn over our yard and the rest of the county.  Felled was a willow that had been weakened by a beaver, a maple that had formerly lost a big limb, and a white pine, totally uprooted.  The pine was in an area that sometimes floods, so it had no need to put down deep roots to reach its necessary water source. It seems that nature prunes and thins out, not only weaker branches, but whole trees to make room for stronger specimens that need to reach the sun.

Strangely, though, a whole patch of naked lilies are still standing on their leafless stems, stems filled with water like a thick straw.  These lilies are a mystery to me.  In spring they send out long, rich green leaves like other lilies.  But in a few weeks, the leaves wilt and die and become humus around the area where the bulbs have been planted.   Then, in hot August when everything else is wilting, up come naked stems, like giant moisture-filled drinking straws. 

These stems shoot two feet into the air, then produce a mass of buds that unfold into the most gorgeous and delicate pale pink lilies. Talk about late bloomers!  Behind our garden swing, rising above a carpet of hostas, there are these glorious lilies.  They are like spring in August!

The other lilies have long since finished blooming.  Even the enduring day lilies are by now waning into mostly seed pods.  Ah, but the naked lilies!  They are proudly standing tall and leafless on their watery stems, breathing joy into the hot summer.  And, amazingly, after last night’s  storm that took down a willow, a pine, and a maple, the naked lilies still stand!

Maybe I am to learn not to despair over late bloomers. They just might surprise me.  Just when it seems  they are never going to bloom, they rescue the dulling landscape with beauty to take your breath away!

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