Cody happily asked me to categorize people in soil types this evening after our bedtime reading of the parable of the sower. "That's Dad!" he yelled after a review of one category. "There I am," he said about the thin soil description. I enjoy that Jesus made it quite obvious of our location on the sower's seed-scattering path. It's a parable that clearly tells us to "Quit it!' if we have too many thorny worries, or to stop being superficially delighted only in God's message. It tells us to press on towards the dark loamy nutrient-full soil which produces the fruit of paradise for others to taste, for ourselves to joyfully experience. All it seems to take is full and endearing reception of the seed, an obedience to the sun and rain, and a thrilling upward unwinding towards fruition.
My son seemed to take this passage as a movement of becoming. I liked that.

Last year, she showed me her prom pictures taken at her grand- mother's. This year, she's supposed to bring the boyfriend by. I've been pacing. I bought her dress last month, shoes today, and I even made her this wrist corsage. She says she'll be here.

I made her date's boutanier (sp!) also. If you have one flower in your garden, you must have false indigo. It's a lovely cut flower and in an arrangement with roses (when they've not been frozen away). They were perfect for today's prom. Statice from an old flower bouquet outlines it. This will go on her wrist. I await!

our wild knight's festival

The women slurped spaghetti, made with peppers, mushrooms, sausage, tomatoes. The women bunched together in the small living room. The women testified to the Lord's goodness in their lives. The women laughed. The women held a baby or two. The women sorrowed over a breast cancer in the room. The women prayed with hands touching her. The women hugged. The women connected in the kitchen before saying goodbye.

The toddler girl felt my hair as I carried her around. Her name was Taneisha or "Nana". Beautiful child!

I came home. My son and I prayed. My husband and I talked.

The glow lingers, and I still tug.

Here's a good word from this morning for this life:

When I said, 'My foot is slipping,'
your love, O Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great wtihin me,
your consolation brought joy to my soul.
Psalm 94:18-19

I was so lonely for my son yesterday! I was so worried for him!

The women at the Thursday evening faith group speak about releasing your children to God: every day, release the anxiety which can grip you, let go, He can handle their issues. I understand to an extent, but I still want to defend them from the mountain lions which stalk.

Today I will try to be less wary, though, and more confident.

I've been in the throes of decision regarding school for Cody next year. I was offered a chance at teaching Creative Writing and Language Arts at an area private Christian school, geared for homeschool children. Yet in further thought, prayer, consultation, I realize that this school could not accomodate Cody and would most likely end in a negative experience. We've investigated the school before for him. I still remember the wave of concern visible over the administrator's face when I told him about the autism diagnosis. Although Cody is mild, yet he still would need some grace provided in the form of patience and love and time. He doesn't fit in the candle holder there.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a Christian school who could make room for all types of children? In Little Rock when I looked, there was one that had an outlook like this. However, the slots were full.

As it is, another plan is in place for Cody for next year, which includes a few public school hours and some tutoring in math and an emphasis on Social Studies and English at home. One door closes, some will open.

With the Virginia Tech specter in our minds these days, I pray that children who don't quite fit in will not be even more ostracized due to a fear or distrust issue. Protect our special children, please Lord! They need a full scoop of directed love, mercy, grace. Amen.

Laughing Song
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by,
When the air does laugh with our merry wit
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing Ha, Ha, He;

When the painted birds laugh in the shade
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
Come live & be merry and join with me
To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He.

William Blake

This week has caused a need for a laughing song. William Blake writes in his Songs of Innocence and Experience about the division within us : the reality of innocence blurbing out within a reality of experience and its grief and pain. There's both. We retreat again and again within us to a longing of a world without guns, to a place where there's laughing, and childhood awareness of joy. We need it now and always. We need a song about laughter, although we know the song of tears too.

May the hope of a future lessened burden of grief somehow land upon those who are deeply grieving over the loss of innocence which can never be erased from their experience. Amen.

This is a calf who lost his mother quickly. Are you my mother? he asks Cody.

Bo refuses to get involved, remembering the last time he chased some cows, he got whooped. He sits and watches the yummy testicles fly. Disgusting!

Cody "turned" / took on a big worried Mamma Cow with his stick and won! She was coming right at him all alone by the corral as she tried to return to her calf. We were all watching him, wondering, if he would be the one to turn and run. But, he didn't; he faced her and inched his way towards manhood that day there on the farm, working cattle like the men (and teenage girls).

A check for the granddaughter cowpoke

Someone earned her keep at the bi-annual cattle drive! It was important to look glamorous as well while filling the blackfoot vaccine and pouring the blue wormer on the cattle's back.

spring break in the Ozarks

Around this time, as we pull into my parent's lane after a 3.5 hour drive, we are exhausted but exhilerated. The sounds and the smells of the fresh country swamp our weary city senses, and we always roll our window down, no matter the weather, to let it engulf us and declare us: Hillbillies once more! Yeehaw!

Here are the kids; the daughter insists that it's high time for the not-so-little brother to learn how to do his time at the gate.

The daffodils to the left were planted by my great-grandmother Vietta, a beautiful woman who once was engulfed by the beauty of this land too.

A Lady Reposeth

Gifts

The question of purpose likes to fling itself full-force into one's face periodically. It especially likes to choose a time when the weather has swung into bleak coldness as it did in our area this week. I've been a scurrying figure, holding on to a tree,trunk,stump,branch,twig until late Thursday, I felt a snap, and I was hurtling through space. (Btw, I've always felt so much like a Virginia Woolf character when this happens. I can't even read her books at times because of that connection I feel to some of her people.)


The question of purpose, of connection, of non-random plans was at my throat again due to some prompting that happened at a couple of groups I attended on Thursday. It had been building too. I sat catatonically afterwards on my red couch with my husband peering at me in concern. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You couldn't understand," I said. And the intense questions became mixed with marital issues until I had to get away and collapse unhappily and troubled to sleep. He didn't know what to do.


The morning, cold, came, and I could barely function. I was confused and within the fog. My husband left early for a men's group from church, and I asked him to have them pray for us. Later an online Bible study prompted me to read a chapter in John which held the verse: "I am the light of the world. Those who follow me will never live in darkness." I held it to my forehead and cried and prayed for the light to remain in me and to shine forth, despite the night of confusion. He is our constant help, the Bible says repeatedly, in time of trouble.


The question of purpose had stared me down, mocking that it was even a possibility, taunting me by saying that my life was just a series of random events which had only the meaning given to it by a personally subjective method. I had found out on Thursday night that even women who had no belief in God/Christ, even many of them had a strong sense of their purpose, of corresponding things which reaffirmed their identity and activity. After this group, I went to a faith group where lovely emphatic black women were saying parallel things but in the beautiful language of faith, with conviction and empowerment, and hope and love. Coupling the belief with a belief in a caring Deity, I knew they held the best possibility, the most light.


Meanwhile, my sense of these things had increasingly decreased. My belief in transcendence, in God's design, had been skiing down the mountain towards the fall-off cliff. Yes, He allows me to swerve and stay safe, yet I've gotten closer by some habits of unbelief and skepticism. That night, I felt like I had plunged off, because I felt that I really had no sense of control in how to believe in these things. I just didn't much.


The day went by, my husband brought me flowers, and we went out to a movie, and we were close. I finally told him bits of pieces of some of my load. He seemed to take the time to listen. That part was helping me. He was kind and caring, a gift.


Then, on Saturday, I went to a local folk festival with a friend. During the lunch break, we talked about some things, and I shared with her some of my confusion on the question of purpose and correspondence of things for that purpose. I shared that I had a hard time believing in that in a highminded way, but I wish that I could. She shared her view and questions, and then she told me that she thought I had a purpose of guiding others, of touching others in a unique way, of being a friend that's needed in other's lives. I have a habit of shrinking back and not receiving these things, which I did, shrink. But, I thanked her and remembered a few instances where I have been necessary to others. Of course, I know that I'm necessary to my children, but aren't all mothers? Nature requires it. Why do I minimize things?


The conversation helped me, though. As I ran this morning, I thought of it, and I thought of God's touch in my life. I always think of the positive things as gifts, and I'm always a grateful recipient. Yet, I stop there. I felt like God was telling me this morning to not stop, to understand the the connection between the giver and the gift. A gift cannot be random because it always issues from a giver; it always issues with a name on it: To Teri: a friend; To Teri: a talent; To Teri: a loving family; To Teri: food; To Teri: light. Therefore, a gift from a giver must logically involve a reason and most likely a purpose. A purpose to accept, like a gift.


I still feel like God wants me to continue and not stop there but, at some point, to understand more and fully accept my part within His purpose, regardless of whether that simply involves who I am now and what I'm involved with. Or, perhaps within something else down the road. I'm opening myself up to that. I prayed for more certainty and confidence again within that.


The light is shining more here in the middle of Missouri. Those dark times are telling. Several gifts for sight were given to me. I pray that we can all follow the light He intends for us to follow.








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instrumentals

It is Monday morning, very early; I've been a bad blogger lately. My head is filled with tunes these days instead of words. I find myself going to my bed, opening my mandolin case and songbook, and working on "Arkansas Traveler" or "Irish Washer Woman" or "Black Mountain Rag". When I went to the Wednesday evening jamgroup, I was incited by the melodies once more. Thus last week's pattern was 1) picking, 2) penance; 1) picking, 2) penance. My picking was glorious; my penance was housework and time spent with family members. That was good, yet I must confess, my fingers wanted to be picking. My dad has bequeathed a hopeless, helpless life of taunt strings and melodic challenge.

Yet somehow a life was managed, and now it's a new week.

I found time to begin a wonderful new book called "The Yellow Wind" by David Grossman. Beautiful, lyrical, haunting, impactful ... and, I'm only on Chapter Two. Check out some excerpts at this site.

Oh hail the black and white Eye-Ball that rolls in its grassy socket!

Recently several of my friends have described their weekend to me. In short: soccer: soccer: soccer. Their kids have been wearing their league t-shirts around since kindergarten at least. Their refrigerators are full of age progressive magnet-backed photos of grimacing, grinning beckham-tots, clutching the ball, lest it rolls out of the boundary-frame. My friends always sound tired about the whole schedule, yet resolved in all-pursuit of collegiate scholarship (if it turns out that way) or at least resolved in keeping their child happy, healthy, and out of trouble. If anything can do that, it's soccer, they seem to think. A debatable theory, I think.

Nevertheless for myself, I'm quite thrilled that my kids are hopelessly inept at ball maneuverment. For one thing, I can't imagine all of those years of finding shinguards and socks. We were intensely stressed out those two and a half years our children found themselves mesmerized by the Eye-Ball (due to parental or peer pressure). One shinguard was always in an unlikely place like the freezer or feminine protection drawer. The mismatched socks were always dirty or vacationing. Often, I used my husband's dark work socks when I was in last second frenzy prior to leaving the house for a practice or game. I should have used his tie for a headband, I guess.

So while the soccer parents drive all over the city or state, I'm glad that we have Sundays for rest, or reading, or grandparents, or church. Saturday mornings are good for the farmer's market, or friend coffee, or home cleaning, or garage sales, or longer visits to farther away family. Or, just for relaxing around the yard, watching the new season's flowers sprout.

If my kids were athletic, given what I enjoy and prioritize now, I would only hope that if a black and white Eye-Ball happened to cross my path, I would kick it out of its boundaries and into the Missouri River, where it could travel to the Gulf, and then beyond to perhaps a castaway on an island, and he could give it a name to fulfill all of his deepest needs. The Eye-Ball would be happy again, but not in my weekend!

(nothing against any of you who have kids on a soccer team:)

Most Blessed of Women be Jael

Commemorates the song of Deborah. Jael acted with stealth as she gave Sisera, an enemy king, milk and not water. The music of seeming refuge lulled him to sleep in Jael's tent, where she offered hiding after a losing battle with prophetess-judge Deborah and army-leader Barak. When the king was fast asleep

"Her hand reached for the tent peg,
her right hand for the workman's hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
At her feet he sank,
he fell; there he lay.
At her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell -- dead." (Judges 5:24-31)

The song rises with righteous entreaty in the final verses:

"So may all your enemies perish, O Lord!
But may they who love you be like the sun
When it rises in its strength."

In the book I'm reading now called "Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers" by Barbara Victor, I'm introduced to modern day women just like Jael and Deborah. Fighters. Killers. Praisers of Allah and his allegiance to those who love him and do his bloody work.

And, I thought that such feminine militaristic zeal was a new thing. As long as there are religious warring men, there are religious warring women -- equal in life, death, and spiritual ambition for glory.

Photo: Ann Hermes, Columbia Missourian, March 18, 2007

Maya smiled and the world was calmed. That's how it felt last night, even in the back student section (thank you lovely student friend for the invite) when we watched her, in person, smile out over her latest enthralled audience. I'm sure the smile went over into the Gaza settlements and into the outposts in Nepal where children march with guns.

Okay, most likely, it didn't. People died today because of violence despite Maya's smile and grandmotherly advice and benevolent hope for humanity. Yet wouldn't one who died today wish for someone who cared, who spoke about caring, who used her time to be expressively hopefully about a better world, who marched her words outwards to spread the care? I would want that in my shocked and final suffering at the hands of hatred.

Maya was funny. She said that she was trying, trying to be a Christian now, but it's so hard. Sometimes, someone will come up, shake her hand, and announce that they're a Christian. To which she likes to respond incredulously, "Already?"

She received many laughs, many claps. I sat there moist-eyed, because I had started to feel like the world was sinking into the mire of hopeless conflict and subjugation. And, perhaps we are. But, if we ask for more from ourselves and each other, as Maya spoke about, a "rainbow in the clouds" can appear: promising hope for even us, for even Israel and Palestine, for even the disenfranchised in New Orleans, for even Iraq, for even around our own homes.

I'm quite glad that I was introduced to Maya Angelou only 12 years ago, despite the gaps in my biased education. She truly is an amazing torchbearer of human dignity. Below is a poem written by her on the subject, written and delivered for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations:

A Brave and Startling Truth By Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

No Rock

Nothing against the gorgeous state of Arkansas and the fine people there, but hallelujiah!, we are not moving to Little Rock. I'm embracing the trail here as I run it, the friends over coffee, the church parking lot, the cheery cardinal that swoops now by my window, the perennials that are peeking up from my soil. I can remain a "Show-Me" girl, and I am mighty pleased, and did I mention hugging all that Missouri offers, every flyin', flowin', rooted, spittin', twangin', show-offin' thing? (even Branson and Republicans!). One big bunch of love goin' on here for the best state and people in the country! Don't you agree??

:)

Friendly fiddlers

The shrieking fiddle boys on Friday nights are especially cute and courteous. Not only did they brush off our windshields, they shoveled an individual path to our snow-covered cars after the jam, during a snowstorm. I like them. However, another venue seems to be necessary for me to hear myself play the meek mandolin.

Fortunately, a couple of men at church were in my bluegrass class. And, they're flexible workers which means they can come to my house in the late afternoon beginning this week. They both have musical backgrounds apart from their beginning instruments, and I trust them, although the BTK man was from church too.

Nonetheless, I'm quite excited about a smaller group, where we can diverge from fiddle tunes which split the air. And, I can improve my hypocritical musical contributions too. I'll still play from time to time with the little boys on their various instruments (mainly fiddle, but occassionally they pull out a jaw harp, a harmonica, and an old mandolin). I'm sure one day they will be famous, and I'll rue the day that they gave me a headache.