Design Goes Down the Drain

Over the Thanksgiving break we went to convention in Dallas again and stayed at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in the center of town. From my window I could look over a myriad of designs and beautiful buildings, and the balcony-wrapped lobby still boasted its two-story waterfall. Our rooms, however, had all been redesigned. Gone were the cozy, wooden swinging doors to the bathroom, and the oval, multicolored designs in the halls--yes the ones that always bubbled up in my camera lens in some sort of optical illusion. Instead, the rooms were stenciled in gray, and office white. The bathrooms were starkly pipes and ceramic, and the one couch looked as inviting as the bench in a traffic court waiting room. So, the automatic blinds scrolled up and down at the push of a button, and the beds were wonderfully comfortable, but the room itself was bleak. Even the standard picture over the dresser had been replaced by a colorless aerial view of the Trinity river.  Outside, down every hall and puddled in front of the elevators was a gooey-looking stream. Its scum-yellow color contrasted oddly with the gray solemnity of the surrounding carpet. 



This was the view from my window, and I loved being able to see the old courthouse with it's delightfully antiquated spires and warm bricks against the cold glass backdrop of the other buildings.

 This is the chandelier in the grand ballroom, where we held our opening sessions each day. The lights were like a thousand warm stars in a a box. They've been there every year, and I hope they don't ever try to remodel them.

 View from the balcony of the13 or 14th floor.

 The fountain and waterfall cascading down the well-lit cylinder with the convention logo superimposed in warm light.

 Glass elevators float soundlessly downward.

 A detail in the hall carpet. This was the old decor...the one they are now replacing...

With this. Can you believe it?

 Here it is again. Old carpet.

 And the new carpet. Yes. It does look like someone spilled a gallon of puke.

 The splendor of this architecture

 Is now reduced to this. I guess it keeps one looking up.

 I don't have any pictures from a room which had the older decor, but I remember it being more cozy than this.

 Bathrooms--all ceramic and steel.

 No spreads on the beds--black headboards with doodles for a design.

 Strictly utilitarian

 Striped floors.

 Couch for uncomfortably reclining while thinking of home far away...

 And more ugly floor. I know. It's hard to believe.

Ah well. That was our last convention in Dallas. I guess I'll never see how long the new carpet lasts. Somebody should have dared to criticize, I think, before they installed it on 26 floors.

I always try to take the stairs at least half of the time to offset all the large evening meals we consume at those Dallas restaurants.
This time, however, my room was twelve floors up. That's an awful lot of stairs. By the time convention was over I had climbed over a thousand....and I took the elevator most of the time. It's a wonder I didn't collapse and fall into one of these rivers.

Eighty-five Students a Day

Eighty-five students a day.

That’s how many I see--

for six years of their lives.

So I've taught 450 students in over twenty  years of Christian school, and the question I ask myself is not, “Where has the time gone? I know that one.

I’ve felt its passing in my bones and seen the years collapse into piles of crumpled calendar pages... 

No. The question I ask myself is :  Where have they gone?  These students of mine: the ones I met as shy, fumbling, excited, energetic, irrepressible seventh-graders; the ones I watched , as year after year  they listened, wide-eyed and earnest, while priceless light broke over their faces; the ones whose hands I guided, whose thoughts I helped shape, whose hearts I bombarded with the story of Christ. Over the years I prayed for them, drawing their names out of a box and holding them in my hand like so many fragile pots of pre-fired green ware.  For six years they were my children too. Then they threw their graduation caps into the air and danced merrily out of my life, headed for fires or fields as the case may be. Where have they gone? What have they done? Have the hours I spent in their Christian Education mattered at all?

 I stand in the hall at CBA and turn the pages of graduated classes—sometimes I’m smiling; sometimes I’m suddenly sober. They haven’t all remembered that above all ambitions on earth is the one great ambition—glorifying God.  Some are floundering in a darkness of their own seeking and some are frail, but still searching for strength. They make me catch my breath and say: “Please God, Bring them Home.”

But there are others—so many others--who give me great joy.

They are light...in a world grown rapidly darker. 

They are salt in a tasteless society. 

They are the “city on a hill” and there is no way to measure what they bring to the Kingdom of God.

I read their blogs…and see women and men of faith—raising their children to be a generation of hope.

I listen to their songs as they create works of praise and sing them.

I see their pictures and read the scriptures they post on face book. I pray when they send out a cry for help.

They are scattered in location but united in purpose:  They honor God.  They are: doctors, soldiers, pharmacists and engineers. Some drive trucks or work on engines while others splice genes in molecular research.  Some farm and weld; some paint, write books, teach, build houses. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they serve Christ.

In Peru, Swaziland, and Thailand; in rescue missions, and small town mission churches. On and on, I see their faces. They are deacons, and pastors, and pastors’ wives, church planters, Sunday school teachers, and worship leaders. They counsel inner city derelicts and kids at summer camp. They volunteer for disaster projects, run Bible schools, write literature.

 

For a handful of these…my years would have been worth it…for a multitude?  I’m overwhelmed!  If I could see them all I’d tell them, just like the Apostle to his precious Philippians:

You are my joy. You are my crown. I thank God because of you.

Philippians 4: 1 Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved.

No More Calculus!

The senior calculus students--all five of them-- meet in my classroom. No, I don't teach that too, but I do get to listen in amusement as the math teacher invariably out-wits his pupils. Yesterday they knew they were going to have a test. In a sudden burst of senior mischievousness, they sat on the floor outside the door and chanted: "NO MORE CALCULUS! NO MORE CALCULUS!

Mr. T. didn't seem the least bit disturbed. He calmly opened the door and invited them in with a cheery: "Come in, come in, illustrious math students. I love your theme song."
This drawing was waiting for them on the board.
They all had a good laugh and settled down to do some math.

Res

Twenty five years ago he adopted a little town:  not a fast-paced, frantically climbing, up-and coming- trend chasing city suburb, nor yet an angst-ridden, point-to prove, news-engendering "huddle of outcasts" kind of settlement.  No. It was a sleepy town of modest, well-tended houses and people who hid from the news by doing good deeds and living normal, and--for the most part--sane lives.

There was one main street in the town, a couple of shops, a  cafe, a shoebox post office hardly big enough to wrap a package in, and a long, stuccoed, vintage-windowed building with a bench outside; it looked like just the place to get some presses rolling and start a newspaper-- a grand newspaper, a "County Enterprise".
 So Res moved into the community, set up a photography business and a newspaper, sampled the ethnic delicacies offered by the local cafe--borscht, verenika and schnetke--and made a point of getting to know everybody in town. Surely there were stories here!

What to write...
Not many murders on main street. No protests or petitions in the nursing home. Not any drive-by shootings in the local high school or the parochial academy dorms--not even an embezzlement scandal in the town office, or a traffic jam within the two mile circumference of city streets...

There were only churches, small schools, a nursing home, a creek that filled with frogs and turtles in the spring (if the rains came), an occasional tornado north of town, and miles and miles of wheat fields which suspended the town in space and kept it adrift in a bubble, isolated, if you will, from the chaos of frenetic living. And there were people--chuckling, cheering, crying, bumbling, brilliant, bellowing people--five hundred of them!

So Res joined the volunteer firefighters and took pictures of the people--people and events and people at events--and if the events weren't immediately forthcoming, he organized events:  turtle catching contests, Easter egg hunts in the park and Easter children's parades through the retirement village, Memorial Day celebrations with high school trumpeters blaring taps into the spring sky, trunk or treat gatherings in October, quartet singings in the summer and fire-fighter appreciations in the fall. He attended all the school activities and made front page heroes of everybody in town. Parents loved him; seniors filled their scrapbooks with pictures and articles he had written about them. Distant grandparents were subscribed to his weekly paper, just so they could keep up with their grandchildren and laugh at his witty jokes. Weaving local names into his "tall tales" column, he endeared himself to the community.

Years passed. The town shrank. Stores closed, and the paper finally stopped printing, but Res remained. He took on the job of town clerk., became a county organizer, and took pictures of graduations and bingo nights at the nursing home. He refused payment for this service, waving it away with, "No, I enjoy taking pictures."  He posted them on facebook and encouraged the county to take all they wanted. They were printed and shared widely as almost a thousand friends regularly scanned his page for pictures of themselves and their family members.

Then, last week, very suddenly and unexpectedly, Res died, sitting in the town office, surrounded with town memorabilia. Outside, on the sidewalk bench, schoolkids sat and visited with the town youth pastor. Not many people noticed anything wrong until the ambulance wailed and his firefighter friends came racing down main street.

Friday night at the football field, there was an empty circle, honoring the spot where the town photographer used to stand. People searched their files for pictures of Res, but those were sparse, because, of course, he had always been at the other end of the lens.

Yesterday at his funeral there was an unusual slide show...not pictures of Res himself, but pictures he had taken.--state basketball triumphs, church pie auctions, museum days, and T-ball games. Res had never married, but his sisters and brothers were there, nephews, nieces, cousins--they filled about four pews. The rest of the church was filled with friends: County leaders and fire-fighters, an entire section of school kids in their royal blue shirts, an entire town, stricken silent-- realizing as they saw their own happy faces over and over, that this man was someone who loved them...and that he had given them a gift they would never be able to repay.

Octoberfest

Since October 31st fell on a Wednesday this year, all the churches in the ministerial alliance held a "fun night" at the fair grounds. There was a concert for the older kids and a games and candy room for the younger ones. I ran the glinko table and awarded everyone with candy whenever they played. They could play as many times as they wanted to, and were assured a prize of at least one piece each time they played. Since they could win up to nine pieces, depending which number their glinky disc landed on, it was a win-win-win situation...unless you count the money their parents would later spend at the dentist.







We had the usual array of costumes--graspy little skeletons and punk cats.












These ninjas and yodeling princess (who assured me that she wasn't a princess, but a ninja in disguise) had to get in character for their picture. I decided that the red-eyes should definitely be left in this one.

There were cute little pumpkins being carried around by proud mamas.

Gracious pirates politely requesting candy with hopeful eyes,

Waddling ducks,

Green-haired dragons,

Ethereal Garden fairies with scarlet eyes,

...and a baby peering anxiously out of the mouth of a Saint Bernard.

Oz Creatures were just waiting for Dorothy's house to fall on them.

















A teeny gnome, somehow escaped from the garden, was running around with a pacifier in her baby mouth.














I wasn't sure if this child was supposed to be a leopard...or a stuffed quail. Her metaphors were mixed, but her pony tails really cute.

I really admired this costume, because it was obviously a hand-crafted one...yet every bit as impressive as those bought off the rack.
The angry rooster doesn't seem to mind his boa feathers or the elaborate comb head dress. What really amazed me were the yellow chicken feet dangling from his mother's arms.

A peering pumpkin...

...Peter Pan

 and a determined nuclear super man
















Matching bandanas; beards the same size.




















And old men telling stories as they supervise.

Everyone Should Have an Uncle Henry

Every Apostle Paul needs a Barnabas...a guy who's willing to give the newcomer a chance and put up with the inconsistency of young people--smiling and encouraging, rather than berating and criticizing--someone who nudges people along and tells them not to give up, because what they are going to accomplish is worth fighting for. My Uncle Henry was a man like that.

This week at his funeral we were privileged to hear the testimony of younger ministers he had encouraged and missionaries he had inspired throughout the years. My husband was one of those ministers; the church his family attended was fortunate to have a pastor who cared for the congregation, even for sometimes rebellious, often awkward, but ultimately kind-hearted teen-agers. He knew my uncle as a pastor. I just knew him as an uncle--my favorite, he'd be quick to assert.

When I was a little girl and answered the phone with "Who's calling, please?",  his standard reply was,
"This is your favorite uncle." leaving me to guess, and risk offending, should the caller turn out to be Uncle Tommy or Uncle Floyd or Uncle Dale. One day I turned the tables. I was at my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving when the phone call came: It was Uncle Henry. He said, "Who's this?"   "Your favorite niece," I replied. I could tell it threw him a challenge. After all, there were eight or nine of his nieces present that day, all running around near grandma's kitchen phone. He paused, just a second, and said, "Well it must be Lilibeth." and we both laughed, realizing how difficult a test he had just aced.

I guess I'd say Uncle Henry was everybody's favorite because everybody was his. He took people under his care and enjoyed training them and encouraging the down-trodden. I remember a time in my life when I was grumbling. The school where my father taught had moved from a small town in Missouri to Houston, Texas. I pretty much hated everything about that. No longer could I roam around town on my bike or walk to school at an old three-story brick building or live in a large house where I had my own bedroom. The weather was deplorably hot and humid; school was a world of dodging rude and apathetic strangers in the hall. In short, I was miserable and wanted commiseration. Uncle Henry did something better; he told me, "You know you are only going to be as happy as you make up your mind to be. Now decide you are going to enjoy the life you are in, and you will."  So I thought about it. And I grudgingly admitted that he was right: I couldn't change my circumstances, but I could do something about my attitude. So I did. The next year, my senior year at high school, was much more rewarding. During that year, I threw myself into tutoring handicapped students and reading books aloud for the blind. I wrote poems and books and got to know some of the strangers at school. Life wasn't intolerable anymore.

Years later, when Turtle and I first decided to become pastors, we moved to a small town in Eastern Oklahoma and stayed in a one-roomed cabin while we tried to find a church that needed us. We had two children, and no full-time job. Turtle was doing "on call" nursing at nearby hospitals. While we tried to make contact with churches, we began attending a church about thirty miles away, because that's where my Uncle Henry and Aunt Jo had moved. Once again, they were our pastors and they pulled us into the church as "helpers" while we sought orientation in our own vocations. We were invited over on Sunday afternoons, played games with the family, ate many a lunch and after church snack. In short, we were encouraged, once again and shown that the ministry, though a difficult profession, was rewarding and worth the effort. We were loved and given a chance.

Years passed. Life got faster, and there were several devastating circumstances for my Uncle Henry and Aunt Jo. They retired to a small house in Arkansas, in my husband's home town and they attended the church they had built there. They lavished affection on their grandchildren and encouraged many young people who still came to them for counsel. Whenever we visited them, we heard all their lively stories and we laughed.  How we laughed. Ever encouraging, they showed us what it meant to persevere through the grayest of challenges, to trust God to bring joy in the middle of frustration and sorrow. 

After Aunt Jo died early this year, Uncle Henry began to experience serious health problems. He underwent a heart bypass surgery and never really recovered. Too many memories faded, too much to look forward to in the next world, the comforter now comforted by a faithful family...the encourager remembered by many encouraged souls; the faithful now raised to honor. I'll always remember him smiling.

Everyone should have an Uncle Henry... or be one.

Of Baby Baskets and Bathtubs

 My sister brought this little baby basket back with her when she returned from a visit to Honduras in the mid-eighties. As the passengers adjusted themselves for the flight home, she had it at her feet, and just before take-off the stewardess walked past, muttered "everything but the kitchen sink" under her breath, grabbed it up, and tried to stuff it in the overhead compartment. My sister ended up carrying the basket all the way home to Texas.  Then Turtle cut foam into the shape of a mattress; my mom sewed a removable cover for it and made little bumper pads to keep the scratchy sides away. Two of my children, at least four nephews and nieces, and two grandchildren took a turn at sleeping in it. Now, it's a Blaze basket, as you can see.

 (I'd really like to have a picture of every baby who slept in this little basket...in the basket, if that's possible. Send them to me and I'll do a sequence.)

 In the evenings, Blaze still doesn't sleep too well. He gets transferred from car seat to swing to bouncer to bassinet to basket...but mostly he just fusses for somebody to hold him. I went to bed at ten o'clock last night so I could relieve the baby-handling crew later. 





 Sure enough, at one in the morning, he still hadn't given anybody any rest, but he was tired enough to give up when I rocked him and tucked him in for the night. In fact, he set a new record of five and a half hours of blessed sleep. Looks like more peaceful days may be ahead for Elijah and Marie.

 This morning, after he ate, I decided that he could sit in a bathtub on the table while I made coffee for myself, swept, and picked up a few things around the kitchen. The lighting was perfect for me to grab the camera...which I had just happened to place conveniently on the kitchen bar.

 What do babies think about when they sleep?
He smiles one second and frowns the next.

 Frequently, he chuckles aloud.

 Hey! Wait a minute! Who stuck me in a bathtub?

Busy, Busy Fall

I really don't sit down and relax much these days.
School is crazily busy. Right now I'm practicing twice a week with the academic team for their district meet on Monday, and practicing in the evening for the upcoming senior play.
 For these two sophomores, whose moms work here, this bench might as well be their front porch; they spend more time here than at home...but don't seem to mind too much.



Having forty seventh and eighth-grade students is wonderful, but it keeps me grading papers as fast as I assign them. Their solution...of course...is "Don't give us any work to do". I tell them that I answer to God for how I teach them, and if I gave them nothing to do, I'd have a hard time explaining to Him why I took money for teaching them, but only babysat them. They talk. I tell them that they will never learn anything that way because everything they hear themselves say, they already knew. So they hold their hands over their mouths to keep from commenting until question time, and they listen to stories with wide-eyes and sometimes subtle smiles (if they already know what's coming next-- which, believe it or not, many don't). Right now we're in Genesis. They're amazed that so much happened between Adam and Moses...and I don't even tell them everything.

Last night was fall concert. Another huge "first" for the nervous seventh-graders.
Seated behind me were a couple of alumni...remembering...beaming at the superb performance of their younger siblings up in the choir.


Outside, the clouds staged another performance--a light show and offering of much-welcomed rain!
Life is pretty much the same here in this little corner of the earth.
We have a particular kind of peace.
I pray for years more.