I only saw the words written, requiring me to infer tone; to assume either compassion or conceit; to decide if the poet mimed quotation marks when he said, “diminished capacity,” — or saints, for that matter — if he even said the words out loud.
Either way, the phrase is fragrant with failure, infused with what might have been, what came and went, what once was lost . . . and now is found faltering, struggling, stumbling, still hoping, as saints do, failure is not the final word.
Forgiveness flows best from brokenness; the capacity for love is not diminished by backs bowed by pain, or hearts heavy with grief. Write this down: the substance of things hoped for fuels those who walk wounded: we are not lost; we are loved.
I know I’ve already mentioned Woody Guthrie this week, but he comes to mind for me every Independence Day because he wrote my favorite song about America, “This Land is Your Land.” He actually wrote the song in response to “God Bless America.”
Here is one of my favorite covers of the song by Bruce Springsteen singing all the verses — even the ones they left out when they taught it to us at school.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for you and me.
I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; And all around me a voice was sounding: This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.” But on the other side it didn’t say nothing, That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land This land is my land From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.
“It’s what’s inside the words,” she said; “Inside heart there’s an ear and there’s art.”
After reading, I couldn’t help but look for words among the bread and vegetables that made up our simple supper last night, both of us finally home after days that felt longer than the time passed. I couldn’t find God in the green beans, or love in the tomatoes; no fun in foccacia; not enough meal to make meaning. But that’s not the last word, is it?
The tomatoes tasted like the smile of the brown baby at the farmer’s market; the crisp sweet corn spelled summer without letters; and the bread, dipped in the olive oil we keep for special occasions, was leavened and flavored by all the suppers we have shared together, fed by the mystery in the mundane: another day in our handmade life.
I didn’t promise you skies painted blue not all colored flowers all your days through I didn’t promise you sun with no rain joys without sorrows, peace without pain
All that I promise is strength for this day, rest for my worker, and light on your way I give you truth when you need it, my help from above Undying friendship, my unfailing love
I never did promise you crowns without trials, food with no hard sweat, your tears without smiles hot sunny days without cold wintry snows no victory without fighting, no laughs without woes
All that I promise is strength for this day, rest for my worker, and light on your way I give you truth when you need it, my help from above Undying friendship, my unfailing love
I sure didn’t say I’d give you heaven on earth a life with no labor no struggles no deaths no earthquakes no dry spells, no fire flames, no droughts no slaving, no hungers, no blizzards, no blights
All that I promise is strength for this day, rest for my worker, and light on your way I give you truth when you need it, my help from above Undying friendship, my unfailing love
I promise you power, this minute, this hour, the power you need when you fall down and bleed I give you my peace and my strength to pull home My love for all races, my creeds, and all kinds
My love for my races, my creeds of all kinds My love for my saviors, all colors, all kinds My love for my races, my creeds of all kinds My dancers, my prancers, my colors, all kinds, My saviors, my flavors, my creeds of all kinds.
These are days that call for me to reflect, to hold my words and thoughts close, to share with those I can see in person, to let things ruminate and mature before they become public. There is no major crisis, no depression (thank God), nothing more than days that call me to listen more than speak, to attend more than act.
I have been quiet, I know; but it’s a good kind of quiet.
Yes, I know we’ve been in Durham for a year and a half, and in our house for over a year. But we’ve had a stack of boxes sitting in the shed in the back yard all that time waiting for us to make room: boxes of books and CDs and the stuff I have to paint with and to make cards and candles. Now things are out of the boxes. The books and such have found shelves on which to sit, but the studio/office is filled with stacks of papers and boxes of paints and paper scraps. And then there are the boxes of photographs and affirmation cards – the real treasures.
In the summer of 1983, I went to youth camp with First Baptist Richardson, thanks to my friend, Gene Wilkes, who was the Youth Minister. The first morning of camp during the Sunshine Show, which was thirty or forty-five minutes of music blared across the camp to let everyone wake up after breakfast, the kids began to gather in the worship area and several of them went to the microphones and began calling names for mail call. The cards they were handing out were “affirmation cards,” notes they wrote to one another with messages of encouragement, hope, and friendship. When I moved on the be Youth Minister at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, I took the practice with me, and then on to churches where Ginger served in Winchester and Marshfield, Massachusetts, and my last stint as the Youth Guy at First Congregational Church in Hanover.
And I think I’ve hung on to almost every last card that I received. If I don’t have them all, I have most of them. I know. I found them again today, along with stacks of pictures that flooded my mind and heart with stories and memories.
And music. Along with the pictures, I found some CDs, among which was Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends:
A time it was It was a time A time of innocence A time of confidences
Long ago it must be I have a photograph Preserve your memories They’re all that’s left you
When we studied the grief process during my CPE days, they told us a normal grief cycle lasts eighteen months to three years. Though we landed in Durham doing about seventy-five miles an hour, both starting work within forty-eight hours of driving into town, and finding ourselves in a place where we feel a great deal of resonance and acceptance, we left behind almost two decades of friends and memories in Massachusetts, which is where we had spent all but about three months of our married lives. Perhaps the boxes had to sit in the shed until we were ready to unpack the last — and some of the most self-defining — things we own.
I’m not sure we could have gotten to it any sooner. And we tried.
Thumbing through the pictures and affirmation cards helped me realize what has replaced the grief is gratitude. I still miss Massachusetts. This week, after reading Facebook notes about old friends heading to camp again, I still miss it. It’s not so much that the yearning for disappears as, it seems, the grief is replaced by gratitude for the tether of love and memory. In the face of the hard realities that we cannot all be together in the same place and life moves on just as we do, I find myself sitting with stacks of colored index cards and photographs that remind me there is a dimension to our existence that runs deeper or wider or higher or whatever word would describe a direction we cannot completely comprehend that lets those words and images that are now years old still have life. Real life in real time.
One of our new favorite TV shows is In Plain Sight, which centers around Mary Shannon, a US Marshall who works with the Federal Witness Protection Program. It is a show about people who have to move without being able to take their memories, or anything else for that matter, with them. A couple of weeks ago, the show ended with this paragraph of monologue that has stayed with me:
Before the Big Bang, before time itself, before matter, energy, velocity, there existed a single immeasurable state called yearning. This is the special force that on the day before there were days obliterated nothing into everything. It is the unseen strings tying planets to stars. It is the maddening want we feel from first breath to last light.
I’m grateful I am able to miss those with whom I used to share laughs and tears, meals and movies and the strange rituals of friendship. I’m grateful for the yearning to be with them again, because the creative power of that love is stronger than the grief that comes with loss, strong enough to let me unpack those memories in my new home, my new place, and begin to write new messages of love and hope to the people who surround me here.
I was checking up on a few things before heading for bed when I saw that Kenny Rankin, a singer-songwriter and awesome guitarist whom I have followed over the years, died earlier in the week from lung cancer. Here then, in the closing minutes of the day, I offer my gratitude for the music he brought to my life and offer you a chance to hear one of my favorites, “Haven’t We Met.”
