Sounds of Hope

I am fired up. I haven’t been this fired up about anything really important in a long time. While in some ways to have my passions stirred is a good time. I haven’t hidden the fact that I’ve been terribly depressed for a long time. But on several levels I am not sure I like being stirred up.  First I wish this issue would go away. I wish Dr. Jones and now this Pastor in Springfield TN would just come to their senses, repent and not burn anything this weekend. Second, I fear that I will be misunderstood, lose friends which are valuable to me and maybe even vilified.   As I said yesterday, I am much more the Kumbaya, get along type person. I feel a real sense of grief in my spirit. After I wrote my blog yesterday, I saw the post from a Pastor in Pakistan. I could feel the pain in his words. He was begging for us, his brothers and sisters in the west to do what we could to stop the burning of Qur’ans. He posted a picture of a burned house in Pakistan. I know religious militant...

I am not sure I want to write this blog. I might lose some friends. I might be misunderstood. I like to get along with people. I really do. It isn't that I don't have a backbone, I just would rather sing Kumbaya and hold hands. Or maybe go back to the 70's and sing And They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love. Those were the days. Flower children and Jesus Freaks, holding hands and giving out flowers. Now we want to burn things. What's happened to us? I have a young friend that I met by chance (as if that's possible with me). I like her. I've already learned from her. She is an iconoclastic feminist Native Woman who loves Jesus. Yeah, that is possible. What I've learned from her in the short time I've known her, is sometimes you just have to say what needs to be said. I learned something from an atheist friend yesterday too. Yes, I am friends with several atheists. I like them as people. The one I met before he was an atheist. I remember him a...

With all this talk about mosques and terror, as if the two are always synonymous, I want to tell you about my visit to a mosque. I am just going to tell you the story and you can draw your own conclusions. I also am not going to try to second guess any and every argument you might want to offer for what you see is “your” side of the issue. I’m just going to tell you a story. It’s my story. Actually it is just one story; I have a lot of them. I have been to a mosque quite a few times and only one time, was a visit to a mosque a bad experience. We were living in Connecticut. There were several mosques within a half hour drive from us. My husband began to attend one in the largely Hispanic neighborhood near Park Street. The worshippers were a variety of people with a heavy emphasis on African Americans. But there were a little bit of everything, Hispanics, whites, Middle Easterners and South Central Asians. They were cramped. They had little space as they assembled on Friday for their we...

When I was a child I used to hear sermons of hell       Someone would say they saw it          The vision of people falling into a fiery pit imprinted on my soul              I’d wonder and fear, cry and repent…                     Now I only think of another line, the line of saints going home I see them in line, in robes of white with sparkling crowns       As they near the throne, they stop and bow             They bow as they have always bowed, before the Lord of Lords I see my godly mother and father, flawed and imperfect made whole by the blood of the Lamb.       I see them together again, worshipping their Lord              They gave there best, they gave me life, they gave me LIFE – they gave me Jesus I see my Sunday School teachers a...

That night was very long, extremely long. After midnight, he was not supposed to eat in preparation for surgery the next day. I remember trying to cuddle and soothe him during the night. We had a family bed and he was not used to sleeping in the crib. We were both uncomfortable; I on the cot trying to sleep and he in the crib fussing. Very early in the morning we prepared to take that long walk and elevator ride to the surgical suite. This time it couldn’t be long enough. I wondered what it would be like to have a child with no eye. I worried I wouldn’t know how to take care of it. I knew I would have to. My husband had no stomach for such things. He never changed one diaper for any of the children. He certainly wasn’t going to take care of an empty eye socket. The words of the woman haunted me. I had called my best friend at the church. She had called the people to prayer. I knew people were praying. Yet, I wondered. Would my disbelief sentence my child to life without his right eye...

We came back from Tulsa with just a little more information. It was late summer. It was time to go back to St. Louis. I come from a Christian tradition that does not baptize infants. Rather we dedicate them as Hannah did Samuel. My husband chose to never participate in these experiences. At the time he assumed that a dedication made them permanently Christian – oh that it would! I had opted to participate in this ritual alone with each of our children. Bethany was the first one that I dedicated alone. Her father having beaten and deserted me when I was pregnant with her, I had no choice. Our pastor at the time had my mother participate. It was just so difficult for the church to deal with a single mother in those days. (Read about her birth here and the beating here .) I remember he used the passage from Timothy about Timothy’s Mother Lois and Grandmother Eunice . He did do a wonderful job. Now it was time to take my son alone. I was rather used to this by now but I never liked it....

This routine of the two-hour trip to St. Louis continued. In the summer, it would often mean a trip to Columbia first, also two hours away but in a different direction.  My mother never liked Hannibal. She was right, but we lived there. She would prefer we bring the children to her. Grandma was very good to the kids while they were in Columbia. The routine on most hot summer days was a late breakfast of pancakes. Dressed in their bathing suits they’d pile into her car and go to Oakland Pool. For a few cents, they’d enjoy the pleasures of summer at a city pool. Sometimes she would have to hunt for them, other times they were ready, when she’d come to get them to take them home for the evening. Before they arrived at the trailer, they would stop at a hamburger place. The place was shaped in an A frame and sold hamburgers for 50 cents. A bag full of burgers for sun baked chlorinated kids made for a wonderful summer. I had quit my job at the Mental Health Center in order to keep up ...