Light Lenten Reflections

Week 4

Cared For, Covered and Comforted

Several decades ago I found myself in a anxious place, in need of comfort. I had had a seriously scary diagnosis, long daily commutes for treatment, and three small children at home. I had people watching my kids, making meals and a supportive husband. Still, I would reach the end of the day exhausted and full of fear about what the future might bring. Nothing I could do on my own seemed to allay the anxiety. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, with all sorts of imagined terrors racing around in my head, I prayed for sleep. As it often happens to me in a desperate place of prayer, wise words from what I can only describe as "not me" popped into my head – "Relax. Let Me tuck you in at night." I closed my eyes, and saw myself in a luxurious bed of white silk sheets, a silk comforter trimmed with exquisite lace. (I'm a dark colored cotton/polyester type myself...) I felt a peace come over me and I was soon asleep. I spent the next few months asking God to "tuck me in" every night, always finding peace and comfort where I had previously found fear and anxiety. Sometimes the sheets changed. One night, when I was physically in pain, I saw dark blue plaid flannel sheets and a comforter, still luxuriously trimmed with lace and ribbon, and though not actually on my bed, I can still remember how soft and warm they felt and how God's peace and comfort was entwined in them. Today, I can still recall how cared for, covered and comforted I felt at night during that scary time.

Some months later, I came across this amazing description of the Holy Spirit as Comforter. (Emphasis mine.):

"Comforter" means one who soothes in a time of pain or grief -- one who eases pain and sorrow, brings relief, consoles and encourages. But I like this definition from the Greek: "One who lays you down on a warm bed of safety." During the cold, dark night of your soul, He lays you down on the soft bed of His comfort, soothing you with His tender hand.*

Wow...

When Adam and Eve's easy walk with God in the garden disintegrated due to their disobedience, they had their own set of fears and anxiety to deal with. They discovered they were naked – exposed, vulnerable, covered with uncertainty and facing the unknown. Their solution? Sew some fig leaves together and try to cover up their exposure, an inadequate solution to a monumental problem. They soon saw they'd lost the intimate walk with their Creator and could no longer stay in the garden. What terrors were racing around in their heads we can only imagine.

But God did not leave them in their nakedness and all the baggage that came with their sin. He explains to them the consquences of their disobedience, and then, we are told:

...the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.**

Imagine being clothed in garments made by the hand of the Lord God. Perhaps they were warm and comforting mink coats, or perhaps PETA's dream of vegan simulated-leather clothing. Imagine being in a place of shame, anxiety and uncertainty, and having the God who walked with you in the garden, whom you had disobeyed, covering you with amazing garments made by His own hand, lovingly suited for the life outside the garden. He cares for you and knows what you need. He sees the futility of the flimsy fig leaf loincloths. He provides garments for the difficult walk ahead, the walk outside the garden, into a scary unfamiliar world.

When I started this lenten series four weeks ago, I had no intention of addressing the effects of the coronavirus, but things have rapidly changed and here I am writing about it. We all now find ourselves in a place similar to Adam and Eve, facing a scary unfamiliar new world outside our familar garden. Yes, there are things we can do – wash our hands for as long as it takes to recite the Lord's Prayer, stay in as much as possible and when we can't, social distance ourselves, and as of this afternoon, here in Illinois, shelter in place. But these things are only fig leaves, flimsy protection at best. As we face this present crisis, we might be inclined to say at least we don't have the baggage of nakedness and the shame of the disobedience of our first parents. However, in truth, we are seeing the effects of their sin and the resulting fallen world, a world where diseases such as COVID-19 can make us feel we have been turned out of our familiar garden. But God does not leave us uncared for, uncovered or uncomforted in the midst of it. He is the same God He was before we ever heard of the coronavirus. His Spirit still longs to lay us down in a warm, soft bed of safety and comfort, soothing us with His tender hand. When we, in our present anxiety, turn to Him for comfort, He makes for us, by His own hand, the spiritual, emotional and physical covering we need to walk with Him in this strange new place. And it's so much better than fig leaves...

Something to ponder: What is your anxiety level in these days of the coronavirus? Fear for yourself? Fear for your loved ones? General uncertainty about your financial future? Worried about running out of life's necessities? Starting to lose it with your kids? Struggling with the disconnectedness imposed on your life? Write a list of things that you are most concerned with right now.

Something to pray: Grab your list and a Bible or biblegateway.com. Pray through your list as God leads. Spend some time doing one or all of the following:

Read all of Psalm 91. Ask God to give you a tangible understanding of what it means to abide in the shadow of the Almighty (vs. 1), what it feels like to be covered by His pinions and to find refuge under His wings (vs. 4).

Read Psalm 36:5-9. Ask God to impress upon you what His steadfast love is like, what it means to drink from the river of His delights, to see light in His light.

Read Psalm 57:1-3. If you feel the need to "cry out", ask God to help you do it. Use your list from above to put all your fears and concerns before God and ask for His comfort and peace in all your unpeaceful places.

Read all of Psalm 63. Ask God to show you how to praise Him through all of what is going on in your life right now, how to sing for joy in the shadow of His wings. Ask Him to show you how it feels to have your soul cling to Him, to have His right hand uphold you.

*From David Wilkerson's newletter, You Have a Comforter, January 20, 1992

**Genesis 3:21

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 3

Restored!

Sometime in the middle of the last century a local farmer dammed a circuitous creek running through his property. He wanted to create a sizable fishing lake near his house on his farm land. The result was a holding place for big largemouth bass and carp. The carp, as they are apt to do, negatively impacted the quality of the lake water, but it was the dam itself that caused the most damage, interfering with the natural cleaning process of the creek, holding back sediment and pollutants. When the local forest preserve district acquired the lake and land in the early part of this century, the elongated Z-shaped lake was ranked second to last in water quality of the 162 lakes monitored by the Lake County health department.

The forest preserve district had to decide what they were going to do with the 58 acre man-made lake in their newly acquired forest preserve. Though picturesque from the distance, up close it was a very large mud puddle with eroding banks and pudding-like sediment clogging up the dam. The forest preserve district came up with three choices – ignore the mud puddle and do nothing, dredge the mud puddle and hope to improve the quality of the lake, or remove the mud puddle and restore the original creek bed. Being all about restoration, the forest preserve district opted for the last choice, embarking on a 12 year project to undo what the farmer had done almost 60 years earlier.

First, they built a cofferdam to slowly drain the lake and prevent the pudding sediment from washing downstream. They then cut a temporary channel for the water to flow through while they took deep soil and gravel samples, accurately locating the original creek bed within the now visible former lake bottom. They dug a new channel where they identified the location of the old creek bed and then redirected the water from the temporary channel to the new/original stream. Lastly, they seeded and planted the land around the new creek bed with native vegetation. After twelve years of planning and work and several million dollars, the forest preserve district now has a vibrant stream flowing through its newest preserve. It's not quite back to its original state, but it should be close in a few more years.

God made lakes and He made rivers, and they both have their places in creation, but naturally occurring rivers, creeks and streams give life in a special way to the land they flow through. When God created the first garden, he made a river flowing through it. As the river left the garden, it became four rivers, watering the lands surrounding the garden. (Genesis 2:10-14) The Bible is full of spiritual references to flowing water. The man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, according to Psalm 1, “is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and is leaf does not wither”. (Vs. 2,3) Psalm 46 tells “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High”. (Vs. 4) You could “be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail” which is God's promise to those pour themselves out the the hungry and the afflicted. (Isaiah 58:10,11) And try to wrap your mind around this one from John 7 - “...Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (Vs. 37, 38) Think about it - we get to be a flowing, life-giving river of living water just by living in a believing relationship with Jesus. We get to refresh others in the same way we ourselves are refreshed when we answer Jesus' call to come to him and drink.

Something to Ponder: Do you see your heart as a source of living water, or do you feel “dammed up”, unable to flow freely? Have you built a dam, maybe with good intentions, only to find yourself now stuck with a mud puddle of impeded flow of what God wants for you? Is the thought of getting things restored and flowing overwhelming?

Something to Pray: Grab a Bible or biblegateway.com and read Isaiah 61:1-4. Note how the Lord's anointed one does a life changing work in the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, those who are bound. Do you identify with any of these? If so ask God to set you free. Reread verse 4. Do you believe God can build up ruins, raise former devastations, repair ruined cities? Ask Him for the faith to believe those things. If there are any dammed up areas in your life that prevent your heart from freely flowing with rivers of living water, ask the Lord to do the the necessary restoration.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 2

Godzilla in the Garden

(and How to Whine About It...)

Vegetable gardening in a yard on a pond has its challenges. In addition to the usual suspects that wreck havoc during the growing season – deer, rabbits, raccoons, the occasional neighborhood dog – I have to contend with marauding geese and turtles of unusual size.* I've learned what vegetables need fencing to keep out deer and what fencing needs reinforcement to prevent rabbits and raccoons from chewing through to the lettuce and chard. And so, it was with no little consternation I watched a large family of geese march out of the pond and head toward my garden where they mowed down a large section of the new grass I had seeded several weeks before on the path between my vegetable beds. Dad Goose, Mom Goose and a dozen or more grass-eating preadolescent offspring! Really??!!

Later, the same season, I planted my usual two hills of zucchini, dirt mounds of freshly dug soil each with four seeds, later to be thinned to two plants on each hill. No critter had ever bothered these unfenced squash, so I was mystified as well as annoyed when I looked out a few days later to see the zucchini hills gone, completely flattened. I went outside in time to see a gigantic snapping turtle slowly making her way back to the pond. Images from the first Godzilla movie came to mind. This behemoth had risen out of the pond like it was Tokyo Bay, had stomped on the Tokyo that was my zucchini crop, and was now returning to the water. A Godzilla-like snapping turtle had just destroyed part of my garden! SERIOUSLY???!!!

It was only a vegetable garden, and I could replant the zucchini. But what about the spiritual Godzillas who wreck our walk with God in the garden of our lives? Adam and Eve had a Godzilla in the first garden in the form of a serpent. That beast seriously wrecked the garden for them, putting questions in their minds ultimately leading them to disobey God and eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That action ruined the easy walk with God they had been taking for granted and cost them the garden. And how did they respond when God called them out on their disobedience? Adam: The woman gave me the fruit. Eve: The serpent lied to me. Blamers, both.

I confronted my own spiritual Godzilla in recent years in the form of physical adversity. First, a diagnosis, dire, but fixable. Just cut out the offending body part and spend the rest of my life taking a synthetic medication to replace the natural version the offending body part was in charge of making, and then, excellent prognosis. Really, God? Now? I've got plans, things that need doing. What are You thinking? A second diagnosis followed closely on the heels of the first. Unrelated, equally dire, but also fixable. Just pump my body full of noxious chemicals for six months, then surgically rearrange parts of it. Again, excellent prognosis, except the new normal doesn't seem very normal. Really, God? REALLY????!!!!! I've already had my quota of bodily woe. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???

Somewhere in the midst of Godzilla stomping around on my body and on my lovely spiritual garden life, a friend of my husband's gave me a book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by Timothy Keller. A dense book on the subject of suffering, the first two thirds of it look at the subject from every cultural and theological point of view. The last third is practical application, i.e., what to do when Godzilla strikes. Keller takes an in-depth look at Job, the biblical model of undeserved suffering who had every area of his life stomped on by adversity. He loses his children, his servants, his livestock and livelihood, eventually his bodily health. As one can imagine, Job doesn't always express his feelings in a spiritually noble way. His life is in shambles, and his friends trying to make sense of it all with him just make matters worse. But Job consistently looks to God, and unlike Adam and Eve, Job does not hide from Him, and God is very affirming of Job in the end. Keller comments on God's vindication of Job:

But why would God be so affirming of Job? Job cursed the day he was born, challenged God's wisdom, cried out and complained bitterly, expressed deep doubts. It didn't seem that Job was a paragon of steady faith throughout. Why would God vindicate him like that?' The first reason is that God is gracious and forgiving. But the crucial thing to notice is this: Through it all, Job never stopped praying. Yes, he complained, but he complained to God. He doubted, but he doubted to God. He screamed and yelled, but he did it in God's presence. No matter how much in agony he was, he continued to address God. He kept seeking him. And in the end, God said Job triumphed. How wonderful that our God sees the grief and anger and questioning, and is still willing to say “you triumphed” - not because it was all fine, not because Job's heart and motives were always right, but because Job's doggedness in seeking the face and presence of God meant that the suffering did not drive him away from God but toward him. And that made all the difference. As John Newton said, if we are not getting much out of going to God in prayer, we will certainly get nothing out of staying away.

Ever since Sr. Joan Bernadette told our second grade first communion class prayer was talking to God, I've taken it literally. Sometimes I talk nicely and sometimes I don't. Sometimes my talk is praise and gratitude. Other times it's whining and complaining. I direct my grumblings and anger toward God and count it as prayer. It was comforting to be reminded from Keller's comments on Job that God counts it as prayer also. Like Job, I can have my moments of challenging God, bitter complaining and deep doubts. I can voice my fears and frustrations to God and even question what in heaven's name is God thinking when I can't see His purposes or reasons for some inscrutable circumstance. The gracious and forgiving God who was so affirming of Job is the same God who created me to walk with Him in a garden. It's freeing to know I don't have to be on my best behavior or have on my best attitude to walk with Him. I need only to keep my eyes on Him and, like Job, do my complaining, doubting, screaming and yelling to God and in His presence. When I get stomped on, leveled by whatever circumstance, I can come to Him as is. Godzilla-ravaged or not, God calls me to walk with Him just as I am.

Something to Ponder:

Has Godzilla stomped and leveled some part of your life or the life of someone you love? How free do you feel to express the pain and frustration of that to God? Do you hide from God until you feel “good” again, or can you come to Him as is?

Something to Pray:

Grab a Bible or biblegateway.com and read Psalm 13. The psalmist goes from boldly questioning God to trusting and praising Him. Ask God to give you the freedom to do both, to honestly be able to flow from questioning and doubt to trust and praise. If there is Godzilla damage in your life, spend some time talking to Him about it. Ask for the ability to be real in your relationship with Him.

God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us as we are. - Timothy Keller

*Yes, they exist!

The Return of Light Lenten Reflections

I haven't written for either of my blogs in a very long time, the reasons real, but too boring to mention. But I felt the writing urge coming back and with Lent upon us, thought a return of Light Lenten Reflections may be a good way of getting back into the swing of things. Again, I'll post something once a week, probably on a Wednesday, and each posting will include something to ponder and something to pray. Feel free to read, ponder and pray away, or just read. (If once a week is not enough for you, I guess you could always go back to my first series of Light Lenten Reflections starting on February 10, 2016, and reread, reponder and repray...)

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 1

Back to the Garden

The fiftieth anniversary of the musical festival Woodstock coincided with a road trip up north to visit our kids. I asked my husband to make a playlist appropriate for the occasion and he, being the King of Freegal*, outdid himself. My ipod now had over six hours of Woodstock-related music on it for us to listen to in the car - some live recordings from the concert, some rerecordings of iconic songs, and three different versions of the song “Woodstock”. Joni Mitchell was not at Woodstock herself but in a New York City hotel room when she wrote that song, watching reports of the event on television. (Her manager thought her appearance on The Dick Cavett Show that weekend would be better for her career than some outdoor concert in upstate New York.) Between the extensive news coverage and descriptions of the festival from her then-boyfriend, Graham Nash, who was at Woodstock, Joni Mitchell was able to write the song most associated with that event.

During our trip, listening to Joni's version of the song, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's version, and the UK's mega-hit version by Britain's Matthews Southern Comfort, I had many opportunities to ponder the reoccurring lyric that inspired this series of Lenten reflections:

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

In these words Joni expresses two things I think all of us, in our heart of hearts, consciously or unconsciously feel. Like stardust and gold, we are precious and valuable, and there is a place, a garden, somewhere we know we are supposed to be, but we are not, and so we long for it, long to get back to it. And why shouldn't we feel that way? We are precious and valuable to our Creator, and we were created for a garden. In fact, we were created to walk with that Creator in a garden.

The book of Genesis gives us some glimpses of the place we long for, the garden we were made for.

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them..

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. +

“It was very good”...and it gets better. This garden not only has green growing things, it had a river to water it, water that divided to flow out of the garden and watered other lands as well:

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.++

And the best:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day...

Green, growing things, water to refresh it, and the living God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day. No wonder we long for such a place. It is why we garden, go hiking in forest preserves, buy homes on rivers and atop mountains. I suspect it is why some of us fish, maybe hunt, run ultra marathons and even golf to enjoy being out in the growing things of the larger garden we live in. Some may prefer to sit indoors, yet surround themselves with houseplants, while others perhaps choose city living only to have rooftop gardens and lofts of hydroponic vegetables. We long for the garden and our lives reflect that longing.

But we were made to navigate this garden with Someone, created to walk it with Another. Imagine hearing “the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day”. Of course, at this point in the biblical garden story, Adam and Eve have already blown it and are hiding from the very Person they were meant to enjoy the garden with. Things deteriorate rapidly and the couple are removed from the perfect place designed for them. And so begins the longing of their descendants to get back to the garden.

So Joni Mitchell got it right. We long to get back to the garden. But she also got it wrong. No matter what we do or how hard we try, we can't “get ourselves back to the garden”. We can't recreate the perfect, walking relationship with the living God in the created beauty of His garden. Fortunately, from the first moment of the disintegration of that Eden, the God who walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day put in motion a plan to get us back to the garden, back to walking it with Him. Every week during Lent, usually on Wednesday, we'll look at scripture and spend some time in our present garden with God. We can't get ourselves back to the garden, but He can, and He has spent Himself lavishly on our behalf in order for us to get there. And it's way better than Max Yasgur's farm...

Something to Ponder:

What is your “garden”, the place where you can glimpse God's creative beauty and power on your behalf? Gardening, walking in the woods, etc. or surrounding yourself with potted plants, maybe urban gardens? If you live somewhere weather permits, step into that place and talk to God there. Or talk to Him and thank Him for the places He can meet you amidst His creation and commit to meeting Him there whenever possible, especially during this Lenten season.

Something to Pray:

Grab a Bible or biblegateway.com and read Genesis 1:26-31, 2:10-17. If all this had been made specifically for you, how would would you view the God who made it all? Tell Him. How would you feel if He wanted to share it with you, spend time with you in it? Tell Him. Then read Genesis 3:1-13. Are there any areas in your life that make you feel like hiding from God at the moment? Again, tell Him. (He already knows anyway!)

I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, where are you going

And this he told me...

-from Woodstock by Joni Mitchell

+Genesis 1:27-31

++Genesis 2:10-14

+++Genesis 3:8a

*Freegal is a free music service one can access through their public library. Each library card holder is entitled to five free downloads per week. My husband takes full advantage of the privilege, getting his five songs and usually more depending on how many other people in the house are not using their full quota of songs for the week.

Giving Away My “Stuff”...

I am the product of a perfect storm of frugality. Born to a mother who lived through the Great Depression, raised by grandparents with a Hutterite heritage of simplicity and never wasting anything, I came of age in that save-the-earth era of the 1960s and 70s. I rode my bicycle the ten miles to and from my high school on the first Earth Day in 1970. In adulthood I fully bought into the reuse, reduce, recycle, green, save-the-earth mentality of the 2000s. Our recycling dumpster is usually full on garbage collection day, our trash dumpster almost empty. I have three (3!!!) compost bins in the backyard. With such an impressive resume of environmental concern, one would think I'd have figured out by now what to do with “stuff”... those things that fill my life that I don't want or need anymore, but I just can't seem to get rid of. “Stuff”...

I spent most of my childhood and part of my young adulthood believing that everything I owned I would keep until 1) it broke, 2) it wore out, or 3) I outgrew it. Any other option seemed like an irresponsible waste of something that was still useful.* Over time, I learned to let go of clothing and household items I was no longer enamored with by donating them to thrift stores and agencies that collected such things. But what about the “stuff”...those things that were just one small step above being actual garbage, the “stuff” that could be useful to the right someone, surely, who would be happy to repurpose it and give it a new life? Now, in the downsizing stage of late middle life, I had to face the fact I had a basement full of “stuff” to deal with.

I never had a desire to have a garage sale, having a hard time imaging people would pay for anything I would be willing to part with. But the concept of having a giveaway “sale” was something I had been entertaining for a number of years. Finally, when the “stuff” in the basement had gotten to a critical level, I made note of the days of our annual neighborhood association garage sales and got to work moving boxes of items into our garage to give away. I printed signs that read “GIVEAWAY – EVERYTHING FREE! (REALLY!)” and listed our address, posting signs at the two entrances to the neighborhood and putting two more signs on the front lawn. We filled the garage with “stuff”, my husband chalking lines around the free stuff, marking the interior “free”, the exterior “not free or for sale”. (We really did want to keep the canoe and the lawn mover and the garden tools...)

My husband had serious doubts about this giveaway thing.** He brought the boxes up from the basement, muttering under his breath that nobody would want this “stuff” and we would just put it in the garbage dumpster at the end of the weekend. But he humored me, putting up the signs and willingly sat in the garage the first morning of the garage sales to keep an eye on the canoe and lawn mover while I went off to Bible study. He had to be somewhere before I returned, saying he would just shut the garage door for the fifteen minute gap in time before I returned. I pulled into the driveway about noon, opened the garage door and was amazed to see the garage that was full of stuff at 9 am was now down about a third of its volume. I sat in the garage that afternoon and experienced what I imagined my husband had experienced that morning.

Several neighbors had real garage sales around us, so we benefited from their traffic. Cars would slow down, look toward the garage, some stop, some move on only to come around again. “Is it really all free?” was a common question. I got into the habit of addressing each approaching newcomer by saying “It's all free. If you can use it, just take it.” And they did. Some would offer money for their finds. We would decline, saying if they felt the need to pay for it, to just send something to their favorite charity. Some people would come, look and leave without taking anything. I imagined they probably had their own basement of “stuff” to deal with.

My husband returned and joined me in the garage, telling me about his productive morning. He graciously said he had come to see the greatness in the giveaway idea. People love getting free stuff, and surprisingly the not-quite-garbage was in fact useful finds for many people. The two dozen glass jelly jars I used to store dried herbs in? Snapped up by some woman. The three dozen plus metal teas tins (Yeah, we drink a LOT of tea...) was excitedly taken by a man who was looking to organize the hardware in his own basement. (I had used the tins for the same purpose, but was unable to break the habit of saving them, even when I had more than I needed...) He also took two old lawn chairs badly in need of restrapping. Old flower pots, boxes of old crayons, random plastic storage containers, old books and magazines, Barbie cars, cheap jewelry and small toys from Happy Meals, sports trophies my children had no interest in keeping, obsolete electronics and various and sundry other “stuff”.

Neighborhood kids would come and rummage through all the kids stuff there, taking some, coming back with friends to take some more. “This is the best garage sale in the neighborhood because everything is FREE!” said one young repeat customer. After he returned a twelfth time, he said he came just to talk to us. His mom had told him he couldn't bring anymore things home. A Hispanic family came toward the garage. I spoke my line about everything being free. The husband spoke something in Spanish to his wife whose eyes lit up and she happily began gathering up her finds. Their children shyly began picking through the toys, perhaps stunned by their good fortune. Some people would ask why we were doing this. Some people asked about the logistics of it, they themselves thinking it was something they might want to try.

One of the items we were giving away was an old metal garden rake, its wooden handle broken in two. My husband wanted to put it directly in the dumpster, but no, I said, I had seen on a craft website that some creative person had sawed off the handle of just such an old rake and turned it into a wine glass hanger. My husband rolled his eyes, left the rake alone and said that if some one took the broken rake, he would declare me a true giveaway genius. We watched as people approached the rake and passed it by, or took it up to look at it and put it down. One man took the rake, got as far as his car, brought it back and said he remembered he had a broken rake just like it at home. The other item that was to become a measure of my recycling-reusing giveaway genius was the box of unwanted sports trophies. I had previously talked to someone at a trophy store, asking if they recycled sports trophies or knew of anyone who did. He said no, but he had heard that some crafters take them apart and use the colorful columns and stone bases for craft projects. The last day of the sale such a crafter came by. She and her husband were staying with relatives in our neighborhood on the way to Kentucky from a trip out west. She took the box of trophies, saying she did indeed take them apart and use the various pieces for different craft projects. She also took the broken rake. She was quite excited to get both and she and her husband gifted us with a railroad spike from a collection of spikes they had in their car from their trip through the Dakotas.

By the last day of the garage sales, there was little left in the our garage. Sadly, books and magazines did not disappear. The books went to Goodwill, the magazines in the dumpster. Aside from those items very little else had to be disposed of. With the big box of sports trophies gone and the broken rake on the way to being repurposed, my husband declared me the genius of the garage giveaway.

***

This year we repeated our successful giveaway when the neighborhood garage sales rolled around again. We had a smaller collection of “stuff”, but again most of it went. Kids' sports tee shirts, excess water bottles, old coffee mugs, backpacks, an obsolete under-the-counter cassette player/radio, a futon without a frame, and boxes of hair paraphernalia all went. A huge box of scrap lumber dwindled to a few random pieces. We put out more books, and this time there were some takers. We had repeat visitors in the neighborhood kids, again sorting through a new batch of small toys and costume jewelry. The man in the neighborhood who took the thirty plus tea tins last year came back and told my husband that thanks to those tins he now had neatly arranged all the hardware in his basement. He said that last year, when he left our garage, he stopped at the local Walmart with the old strapless lawn chairs in the back of his pickup truck. When he came out of the store, they were gone. Those giveaway items had unexpectedly and unwittingly been “given away” again...

*If you desire to delve deeper into my save-everything mentality check out:

http://marynapier.blogspot.com/2014/03/mentalshelving-myhusband-grew-up-in.html

**If you want to delve deeper into his throw-away everything mentality, see above link...

And Now for Something Completely Different...

“What's with The Angle?” you may have been wondering. “Has she given up writing?” I haven't been posting much on this blog site the past year because I've been working on a new blog – Haban R Us.* Unlike the “eclectic ramblings” of The Angle, the new blog has required more research and reading and remembering and is still very much in process. However, I feel I've written enough to launch it, so check it out. It's an exploration and history of my family's spiritual roots. I hope to make it long on stories and succinct on the historical narrative. I plan on posting to the new blog frequently (the definition of frequently yet to be determined...) and there seems to be enough family and historical material to keep it going for a long while. The new blog can be found at https://habanrus.blogspot.com/

I'll continue to link my new blog posts to facebook, but I'm leaving this note for those who bypass fb and come directly here. I'll continue my eclectic ramblings in The Angle when the mood strikes me. Probably during fishing season...

*Most of my readers are probably thinking “Whaat?” Some of my readers, however, might recognize the word and think “Oh, goody! Grandma and Grandpa stories!”

Looking at Billy Graham from a Catholic Pew

Billy Graham was someone who flitted in and out of my Catholic awareness growing up...the tall, handsome man with the booming, yet surprisingly gentle voice, preaching to large crowds in stadiums on TV...the person seen with presidents during times of national and political crisis...the face on the back of the latest bestseller at the local Christian bookstore. My hard-of-hearing grandfather would watch Billy Graham's crusades on the television, holding a small speaker to his ear to catch every word, commenting at some point that the Catholic Church needed to have more preachers like Billy Graham. Grandpa knew Graham wasn't Catholic, yet he recognized the universal appeal of Billy Graham's message to Catholics, Protestants and anyone else out there that might be listening. Grandpa knew that every person Billy Graham invited to enter into a relationship with God could, as the iconic crusade hymn sings, come “Just as I am”, with their sin and imperfections, and receive forgiveness, salvation, eternal life along with that all important relationship with a loving God. Pretty good deal for anyone. But I think my grandfather also recognized Billy Graham offered something that the Catholic Church lacked - process – simple, thoughtful, make-a-decision process. The word process is defined as a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. The process that Billy Graham offered went like this: listen to the gospel message, decide to fully buy into it, come forward publicly to acknowledge the buying in, and start (more deeply continue, for some) to live a changed life, one more lived for God than oneself.

Growing up Catholic, I was familiar with all the words Billy Graham would use during his crusades, but I didn't know a thing about process. In my second grade-first-communion-preparation understanding of the Baltimore Catechism I came to understand the gospel message that Jesus's death and resurrection was all about forgiveness, salvation, eternal life and getting into a relationship with a loving God. We get to go to heaven because Jesus died for our sins. We get to have a relationship with God because Jesus died for our sins. We get eternal life because Jesus rose from the dead...after he died for our sins. I bought into it all, though looking back now, I bought into it at arm's length, without process. It was all out there, somewhere, waiting to be taken in, something to be assumed, but never anything to concretely act on. For many Catholics, process is often stumbled upon accidentally, in a sermon, on a retreat, or, as in my case, God provided the process Himself. Somewhere in my high school years I felt a strong challenge from what I could only call Someone-not-me. Did I really believe all I had been taught in twelve years of Catholic education about Jesus' death and resurrection? Did I want that personal relationship with God? Did I want to spend the rest of my life living in that relationship and everything that may mean? Answering these questions was my process, and life for me was different from then on.

Fast forward 17 years...

I was now married, living in Rochester, New York, attending a Catholic church and involved in a Catholic Charismatic prayer group. Our group, though distinctly Catholic, rubbed shoulders regularly with the other denominations in the city, going so far as to cancel our regular prayer meeting once a month to go and pray with some of the other churches for revival for Rochester. It was, therefore, no surprise to us that a short time later, the Billy Graham crusade was invited to give a crusade in Rochester. Also, a bit more of a surprise to some, but not to us praying Catholics, was how enthusiastically the Catholic bishop of our diocese got behind the crusade. In a letter to be read at mass in all the churches on a Sunday before the crusade, the bishop encouraged all Catholics who were able to attend the crusade to do so, that what Billy Graham had to say needed to be heard by everyone. Our parish promptly put out sign up sheets and promised to charter buses to the crusade if enough people signed up. The response was so great that the parish ended up chartering one bus for every week night crusade and two buses for each of the two weekend sessions.

Many of my Catholic prayer group friends were involved in the logistics of the crusade, from being prayer counselors during the crusade to hosting followup Bible studies afterward. I had not gotten involved, expecting my third child days before the crusade was to come into town. Still, I wanted to be part of the Billy Graham experience, to see first hand what happens when this man comes to a city. The crusade was to take place at Silver Stadium, an outdoor minor league baseball stadium, home of the Rochester Red Wings.* Could we go to the stadium on one of the crusade days? I wasn't sure that my born-a-Catholic-will-die-a Catholic husband was open to such a decidedly Protestant adventure. But, the bishop had given his permission, and my husband knew I wanted to go, so he happily facilitated the trip to the ball park. We found a sitter for our two older children, packed up our month-old daughter and headed out to the stadium.

I had already “processed” my personal relationship with God, but my husband, a life-long practicing Catholic, had yet to personally grapple with those process questions I had dealt with in my teens. He knew enough about Billy Graham, his message and the format of the crusade to know somewhat to expect. When we arrived at the ball park, my husband pointed to the seats high up in the last row of the stadium. That's where I want to sit, he said. He told me he remembered seeing a crusade on TV, and how Billy Graham, when calling people to come down to the field to acknowledge their decision to accept Christ, would specifically point to those sitting in the very last, highest row of the venue, telling them not to worry, he would wait for them, there would be plenty of time for them to come down. I want to be one of those people, my husband said.

Billy Graham Crusade, Silver Stadium, Rochester, New York, September 1988

The format of the crusade was simple. There was a time of choir-sung worship music, followed by Billy Graham's gospel message. His voice was simultaneously strong yet gentle, showing no evidence he had spent several days before the crusade in a local hospital being treated for a spider bite. His message of God's love, the forgiveness of sin, the promise of eternal life and the personal relationship with Jesus available to all was clear, followed by a call to come forward onto the field for prayer for those who wished to commit their lives to God. Those who came forward were prayed for as a group by Billy Graham and then individually with one of many trained counselors, given a copy of the gospel of John, and given information about follow-up Bible studies available at local churches. True to his word, my husband was one of those people who came down from the last, highest row to the field of the stadium to formally commit his life to God, accompanied by his wife and infant daughter. In the not-so-random way of God's serendipity, a counselor on the field approached my chemist husband, they exchanged pleasantries and found they both had science backgrounds. They talked, they prayed together, and then the counselor handed my husband the gospel of John and a small book with steps (more process) on how to grow in one's relationship with God. With your scientific mind, he told him, this will all make sense to you if you study it. He did, and it did. In the weeks that followed the crusade, my husband attended one of the follow-up Bible studies, hosted by our Catholic parish. He grew in his new (renewed?) relationship with God. We were now together in the demographic of Catholic born-again Christians.

Billy Graham passed away last week. He was 99 years old, and it is estimated that he had preached to 2.2 billion people in his lifetime, counting radio and television audiences as well as in-person crusade attenders. It is believed that 3.2 million of those hearing Billy Graham's message responded by accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior. These millions come from all walks of life, different religious backgrounds, including no religious background at all. God provided the forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life for them all. Billy Graham simply delivered the message of that forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life and the process to grab hold of it and make it one's own. Millions of people are grateful for that, my husband and I being two of them...

Just as I am - without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,

-O Lamb of God, I come!

- From the Billy Graham Crusade hymn Just As I Am

*The most famous person to appear at Silver Stadium before Billy Graham was Cal Ripken, Jr. He spent the 1981 baseball season as the third baseman for the Red Wings when it was a minor league team for the Baltimore Orioles.