Perspective Mixed with a Side of Faith

May 20, 2015

          While cleaning out my desk, I found this little poem I wrote on a scrap piece of paper some time ago.  With the things that have gone on in my life, I have to believe that there is a God, that there is order and purpose for the things we go through.  My faith is part of who I am and how I make decisions in the everyday.  The direction of my life has not been necessarily straight forward as I wish sometimes it would be.  I take the gestaltist view that the whole picture is what matters.  I am but a fixed finite speck in a vast infinite whole and so my perspective no matter how hard I try, will always be finite.

The grasses grow and wither,
Over the surface of the earth.
We scurry hither and thither.
And over it all God stands,
All of time resting in his hands,
Watching over everyone in all the lands.
We see but a pin prick of light,
While the Father sees the entire globe so bright.

I am both insignificant and grand depending on perspective.  As an individual in a big wide world of a population 7 billion plus, I am but an insignificant grain of sand.  I have no grand title, no great role to play within society at large, no powerful profession.  I’m just a stay at home mom and quite often when I am out among the throng I feel the “just” part strongly.  I am not the one that they crowd gravitates to when part of a group.  It doesn’t help that I am an introvert and definitely a thinker.  But hey, it’s too bad they didn’t get to know me.  They might discover I have a huge skill set and knowledge base to share. 

            And yet to my children I am grand.  They depend on me in their daily lives and I believe they’re young enough to believe I am grand yet.  In the tender years, I am their hero.  We’ll see how they feel in the teenage years.  The drama is already starting with my daughter.  To my son, because of his health I have been a lifeline.  More than once I have rushed him to the hospital when he was ill and tended to him to help him get well again.  I love my children.  I’ve sacrificed much for them.

            Perhaps what I do matters, what I do for them as much as what I’ve given up for them.  My husband and I are their primary character examples.  We’re raising them as best we can and who knows what they will go on to do in their lifetimes.

In our daily interactions we make choices that affect others, no matter how small.  What if I’m the one who throws a pebble in the water and the small ripples of displacement that result combine with the big waves of the sea to build just high enough to sink a ship?  We’ve no idea what results from the choices we make and how our cumulative actions combine.  In His infinite wisdom, God does.  Perhaps we form a beautiful mosaic of interwoven separate, yet somehow unintentionally dependant actions result in something good.

            We can plan and act and hope that our actions bear the fruit we desire, but sometimes no matter how hard we try things just don’t come together.  Sometimes wonderful things seem to come out of the blue.  Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”  I can give it my all only to have it all fall apart because it wasn’t meant to be.  God sees the big picture and I see the world through the small pinhole of my perspective no matter how much I think things through.  I make decisions with the information I have gathered over my experiences of my lifetime with my finite viewpoint. 

            I may never be anyone considered great by the general populous or be a household name, but in my household I matter.  I would rather be insignificantly grand than grandly insignificant. 

A Sanctified Sandwich

April 21, 2015

Writing Club

Prompt: Write a story using: A Virgin Mary statue, a bucket of marbles and a sandwich nobody wants to eat.

This one was a tough.  It’s an odd combination.  We had 25 minutes to write our story on the spot.  I usually know which way I want to go immediately and fly along with it.  This time I stewed a while before setting in.  I knew I wanted to use the idea a holey/holy/wholly sandwich and the idea of communion - the bread represents Christ’s body.  It's a rough sketch, but I struggled with this one.

Murray Murtague shoved the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth and downed it with a swig of coffee.  “They’re saying it’s a bloomin’ miracle!  All those busy bodies from the ladies auxillery all over town.” The Scotsman bellowed merrily, slapping his hand down on the table making his plate dance and sending his fork skittering across the surface.  He gave a loud belch and daubed his lips daintily with the yellow napkin.  “A sancitified sandwich.  Ha!  Holy bread, truly somebody’s done lost their marbles, a whole bucket of them!” 

            “I sae it with my very own eyes, I did! The crust and all, it ‘s like them angel clouds photos you see on the internet.”  His appetite well sated, Tom McGuiness pushed his plate away leaned back on his chair, brushing the crumbs from his green velvet jacket and then crossing his arms.  “Ms. Margery herself put in the display case in the window, pastrami on marble rye and a side of faith –in more ways than one.” Tom McGuiness gave a hearty laugh, followed by an equally loud belch.  “Well excuse me! She’d be a hoping to draw an extra large lunch crowd.  Our very own pub’s been blest.  Tis holy bread in more ways than one.”  He took a swallow of coffee and held up his coffee mug in request for a top up.

"I'll put on another pot for you, Tom!" Walking over to clear their finished plates, Ms. Margery interjected with a broad smile, “Tis an image of the very Virgin Mary herself, like down at the kirch.  See there the voids in the bread.  Imagine that!  The loaf rose just like that, the very swirls and all.  Then Molly Mae cut into it without even noticing it and served a slice to Father Downs who swore it were suitable for communion on Sunday, as veritable as the body of Christ it be.  Can you not see it just there Murray?”  

            Tom McGuiness’s lunch companion Murray Murtague, wasn’t sold.  “Seems like a mighty waste to leave such a lunch unfinished.” He was eying up the delicacy resting on Ms. Margery’s finest plate, a burgundy and gold floral pattern.  “I can smell that pastrami from here.  Seems to be my stomach would be well blessed, sanctified and saved to be sure if you’d be so kind as to bring me a second helping."

Sequel to Death of a Mermaid

July 2, 2013

Writing Club

Prompt: Write a sequel to one of the short stories that you wrote in a previous meeting.

Time Frame: 15 minutes

He returned to the sea to gaze into its grey depths often, sailing along the cragged coast, then back to the harbor alone. Sometimes, he watched the water half expecting to see her auburn head rise above the churn once more. She was truly gone and only he knew where.  Her body had never returned to the sand. His mermaid still swam in the depths amid the haunt of fish.

There had been many questions, mainly out of curiosity. The rumors had filled in the rest. Those who goaded her made her a legend of wild fancies, ignorant of the blood that remained upon their heavily wringed hands.  She had gone back to Wisconsin to her mother, to the little town of her birth, a girl of the plains just couldn’t make it here in Maine, as a fisherman’s wife.  Some said she had found another, a millionaire and ran away with him to New York.  Wasn’t she just in Florida with Thomas Martin’s cousin?  She took a job down there. 

            He let the tales fly.  It was better that way.  Her clothes he had burned in the fireplace, all except that sweater they bought down at the seaside the day the pier was just a bit too cold.  He couldn’t do it.  He had burned his hand rescuing it from the ashes.  It was neatly tucked away in the wooden chest by the bed.  On days when the sky took on that same somber gray, he would pull out her tea set and set out a second cup of earl grey.  She had appeared like a shadow in his mind’s eye, dancing across her now wild garden.  A flash of auburn curls, weightless in the white dress he had sent her off in, free of the fetters of despair that had held her down in this life. 

Now and then she stood behind him and whispered softly in his ear. He was sure of it, but he would turn his head and find her gone.  It was madness he thought.  He was slowly slipping away just as she had, slowly being consumed, but he couldn’t shake off her specter.  If he really was honest with himself, he didn’t want to let go. 

I chose to continue Death of a Mermaid because at that point it was one of my favorite spontaneous stories, kind of a dark one, but not without a point.  Turning a blind eye may not have such devastating results as suicide, but how often do people let someone go when things get messy or they’re struggling to hold on, when they need someone to stand by them?  It’s easy to be too busy with life, too burdened in our own troubles to not step in and extend a hand when it would have made all the difference.  

Erleben (Ich glaube dass ich bin noch hier.) (I believe that I am still here.)

May 8, 2015

   I used to collect things when I was a child: maple leaves, stones, stamps, post cards, puppy figurines and my little ponies.  My mother collected teacups, mostly because loving relatives thought she should collect teacups and gave them to her.  I think it's a common human behaviour to collect things.  From the examples I had around me, some part of me though that it was the epitome of success to be surrounded by nice things, probably fed by my sparse upbringing.  I didn't have one tenth of the toys in my childhood as my own children do and as few as I had, my parents had even less.  My mother, who had five brothers reminded us often how all of their toys fit into a cardboard box.  She never did tell us how big the box was.  I hope it wasn't the same cardboard toy box my grandma sent us to find when we visited.  It was pretty small.

   Being a little older and hopefully much wiser now, I have learned that having a bunch of trinkets decorating your space means more time spent moving and wiping down these dust collectors.  It takes time to have collections, time I would much rather commit to something else, something more precious. After all as I get older, it seems time is the most precious commodity of all.  As a mother, wife, living being that requires food, water, exercise and time for sanity just to take a long relaxing breath in and out, after household chores, caring for family members, making time for reading and writing and hopefully some sewing.  Some days that's all the time there is and most days I have to scurry like a squirrel to get through it. Who wants to be dusting knick a bric?

  Perhaps it's the longing to hold onto something good in the past.  I am a very visual person and just seeing an item or a photo usually brings back a flood of warm fuzzy associations and creating the sense of being rooted that so gratifyingly relieves the pressure of the present world which feels as if it could at any time be upheaved, leaving my life dumped out like a baby with the bathwater.  Although over time I have learned that the memories don't need to be purged along with item and in some cases, it's been good to let go of certain items because it does allow for a release of some moments in my life that I would rather not hang on to.  (Especially those awkward junior high years.)  Those moments for good or bad have helped shape who I am, but aren't moments I want to relive.  Does that mean I am a self-confessed recovering packrat?

  And then there's all the things I dream of doing if there's a spare moment: improving my french, studying a little psychology, reviving my calculus skills, digging up my studies from yesteryear, from that other life I left so long ago.  Priorities change by necessity.  Career got set aside because of cancer and then again for a child with health issues. The intellectual me got sat upon a shelf in the name of survival, partially due to fatigue and partially coping mechanism.  It's better not to dwell of what was given up, rather focus on what's needed in front of your nose so you can keep going day to day.

  Problem is, in the last few years, like water surging on, trickling down the path of least resistance, the walls I have built up, are crumbling.  The dam is cracking and no longer can I deny that side of me, nor my own disappointment of what my life is versus what I thought it would be back then.  But with the construct of time, I am but a fixed vessel travelling along a stream.  My little boat has been sent through the rapids and spun round in a few eddies and I can't go back.  All that I have is the present and so with the grace of God go I and try to make what I can of where I am.

  The word "Erleben" is german for to experience.  It returned to me one day as I realized I had let my german lie stagnant, silently decaying away in the dark of subconsciousness, losing its lustre with each passing day, details fading into the barest of passive comprehension.  I was listening to a piece of german opera music, and the word "Erleben" popped into my head and I knew what it meant without trying to recall.  It's funny how with the right stimulus, what I thought was gone, I find isn't lost at all.   Forget the stuff, the greater value is the experience, the memory.  Do I really need souvenirs to hold onto the moments I treasure?  (I don't know the history/l'histoire du mot, but souvenir is French for to remember.)  Isn't that what really matters in the end after all, the experience?

Teapots and Tender Moments

May 8, 2015

   I was given a little orange and white ceramic tea set when I was a kid.  It wasn't fancy or new.  I still remember the neighbour lady giving it to my mom when I about three or four out by the plum tree in our backyard.  I can't really tell you exactly my age because of my comprehension of time back then. (As a small child it seemed that time passed so slowly and the moments of significance are different that these days.)  It's one of those moments I can go back and see in my mind's eye.  Mom thanked her and took it in the house and that was the last I saw of it until a few years after we moved back onto the farm.  I knew at the time it was for me, I remember the old lady saying so, but Mom didn't let me play with it.

  On the farm, its new resting place was in my mom's buffet hutch kept safe until I was old enough to play with it and wouldn't break it.  I never did play get to play with it.  It was simply forgotten about there in the dark of that lower cabinet.  Dusting one day, I came across it as a teenager.  Several pieces were broken as another too precious to be used item had fallen on top of it.

  It's the behavior I find curious, this preservation of things.  Maybe houses don't have "good" rooms for company anymore.  Why have things that are too good to be used for fear of breaking or spoiling them?  We had "good" furniture in the living room on the farm that was not for playing on.  That room was solely for entertaining company and as I thought because I was the one who had to clean it, a room for dust collecting.  We had good clothes that we outgrew before they wore out and perfume that went rancid before the bottle was emptied.  Either we didn't take the time to entertain enough.

  Coming from a long line of frugal farming families, I more than understand the thought process.  It's practical and conservative.  Farm life is hard work, down and dirty at times.  Wear barn clothes to the barn, play clothes outside and Sunday best to church.  Take care of what you've got.  Don't be wasteful.  Save this and that because you can fix, patch, repurpose and you don't know when you will get into town next, but then what good was it having a perfectly good and not to mention tea set and never enjoying a single tea party with it.  Perhaps my doll and stuffed horse weren't good enough company, not really.  I think my mom was just really busy with all the tasks she had to do and it never got brought out.  With four children, a family business and a huge garden she was busy holding everything together, making ends meet and stretching a dollar as far as it could go.  We were well cared for.

   I never did forget the orange tea set though.  Perhaps never getting to play with it, made me want to play with it all the more.  I told myself I wouldn't do the same thing.  I did.  No keeping things for good, use them every day and enjoy the little moments because maybe those big moments are too far and few between and those items we save will be long forgotten, broken or too small.

   Then while I was spring cleaning today, I remembered that at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards rests one very expensive, Disney Princess pretty pink tea set in a fancy pink and white box purchased for my daughter and those tender years are flying by.  I think the tiny teapot, cups and saucers need to sit on my counter for a while, maybe serve a couple cups of white hot chocolate "tea"and cookies a few times before it's too late.  If they break, they break.  C'est la vie!  At least I still have the happy memories and I know that the set was put to good use.

Flu Brain Fugue

Flu Brain Fugue

May 4, 2015

The flu bug or something like it hit our house last week.  My son announced it's presence at 2:30 Wednesday morning.  After two stays in the emergency ward, we finally got to come home.  I thought I was in the home stretch and then I felt the bug's dizzying grip.  After resting two days, the first of which I was in and out of dreamy sleep, I was becoming very sick of the television for company so I decided to pick up pen and paper and see where my woozy head went -a little bit heavy, but life problems have a way of floating into one big murk when your head and body feel like they're made of lead.

And so the fugue goes on and on,

Round and round I go,

Spinning, falling, lost in snow.

Heady whirls, drifting swirls,

Dreaming pinwheels and paper cranes.

Pounding, pulsing and then it wanes.

Heavy sand, thickening mud

Here comes the flood.

Wash of hope, wretching wild

Toppled, turvy, trending child

Torrents like rain on tin,

My head’s a spin,

Clamour, breaking, bashing din.

Turbulent gust of autumn wind,

Howling, grasping, groping mad,

Smashing, dashing, crashing sad,

Chilling, shaking, rattling shiver.

Bent, broken on tattered wings,

Fail to deliver.

Getting harder and harder

To continue to sing,

Try.

Mount the chorus to the heights,

Fall far short for lack of might.

Raise a frantic voice against the storm.

Subtle was the melody once while time was still.

Lullabies and whispers,

Grown into a mighty shrill.

And yet undone and drowned by greater will.

Spilling into the causeway,

Gazing at the swill rising in the north,

Wash away, wash away,

Rise and fall, tide and all.

Cold and chill, harm and ill.

Hope beyond all measure.

Quiet and still, God waits to intervene,

When the time is right,

He arrives to soothe our plight,

And hope becomes more than a dream.