Awesome wilderness of Loon Lodge

The “Williams Camp Early History” diaries, written by a young doctor from Boston in the early  1900’s say, “We are thoroughly en see some new joying ourselves these days. It takes…almost three days to get really broken in so you enjoy things  -- I mean so they all sink in and make an impression. The first day or two you see the mountains and their beauty and you appreciate the place, but not for three days or so do you get all there is to get out of it. Then it begins to sink in deeper and deeper and you see new beauties in everything, and every time you turn towards those grand old mountains you see some new thing to fill your soul with wonder and admiration.” Wednesday, January 10, 1912

The writer was sitting across the cove from us when he wrote those words. The pond hasn’t changed a great deal in 100 years. It still is a “wild” pond, an untouched wilderness. Yes, a little more accessible as we came in by road instead of by canoe, but in essence, the “grand old mountains” are still looking down on us. 

The wildest part of Loon Lodge is the loons. The cry of loons signals wilderness, and their eerie laughter across the pond on a dark night can still raise the hair on the back of my neck.  This year there are at least ten loons, but four seem to like our cove. 

Morning mist blanketed the pond as the sun rose this morning. And like frigates taking against the wind, the four sailed past the dock. Two are adults, two are full grown fledglings, but their color is rusty brown instead of the stark black and white so distinctive of the adult loons. 

Mid-morning there was a fishing lesson. The two adults cruised back and forth, dipping their heads and coming up with little fish, and then smoothly transferring them to the beaks of the “kids” in a swift, seamless move. Later afternoon apparently was diving lessons. One adult, two fledgies. Adult dives and comes up, two fledgies dive and come up. Over and over, right in front of the dock, cruising back and forth.  Just before supper one fledgie came and hung out in front of the dock, preening feathers, practicing dives, and incredibly, coming up with fish in its beak. Lessons learned. 

Dark has fallen, and it is incredibly black. There is no moon, just starshine out across the pond. When you stand on the dock and look out, you can see the water shining, and the dark outline of the mountains. When you look back, if we have turned off all the gas lights in the lodge, it is black as pitch. 

Day three settles into a rhythm. The silence is overpowering. The emptiness is overwhelming. The glory of the wilderness is “filling my soul with wonder and admiration.”

A Spirit morning

A group of young moms gather on a warm tropical morning for fellowship and prayer, children wiggling around the fringes. At first glance, they could all be from one country, but when they speak it is obvious that they are from many places around the globe. Business has brought their husbands to this corner of the world, and they are raising their kids in a wonderful city, but thousands of miles from “home.”

We’ve been asked to talk about living overseas with children, schooling choices, creating a home in a place where you are the foreigner.

They don’t know us. We don’t know them. It begins slowly as we tell some stories and lessons we’ve learned. At one point we talk about dealing with the forces of evil, spiritual warfare in our home far from our own comfort culture. We suddenly touch a raw nerve. I notice tears on the cheeks of the young British woman beside us. The woman from India is nodding her head. Others move forward on their chairs, suddenly intent. We pause and let them talk.

The British mom speaks first. “We were on holiday this last weekend and there was a large temple area in the middle of the resort. It was frightening, and I realized that we all had headaches all weekend, but they stopped as soon as we came back here.”

“We just moved house,” the Indian mom says, “and we thought about praying over our new place, but my husband was leaving for a business trip right away and we didn’t do it. Then our little daughter began to wake up screaming in the night.”

“My husband comes is under such stress at work that he can’t sleep. The whole bed shakes when he lies down at night. I think I need to be praying more for him, and for both of us,” puts in a woman from Switzerland.

“I thought it was just us,” says a South African mom. “I think we’ve been under attack and I didn’t even realize it could be spiritual.” A Finnish woman puts in her piece too.

They circle the room and begin to pray for each other, reaching out to touch hands. They pray for God to give them the spirit of power and not of fear, to protect, guard their families, to be willing to open up and talk with each other about deep spiritual issues, and that they would consciously pray for others in the group. They pray for peace and for the ability to understand that God is their home no matter where He puts them.

As we get ready to leave different ones come and talk to us, thanking us for affirming them, for ministering deeply to their spirits. We leave and head down the steep hill to the transit system, recognizing that the Spirit was in the middle of the circle this morning. 

The Table

After wandering the planet, the maple table has returned. It has history, be it just this generation. When we rented our first apartment on Oakdale in the Keswick side of Glenside, the table was in the kitchen. We could have it for $15, with four chairs. It has a bit of a funky look to it, obviously an attempt in the 30’s to look “modern.” We paid our $15 and adopted the table.

It was covered in pure 70’s “antiquing” paint in a hideous shade of green. I remember tying it on top of our Volkswagon and taking it over to my parents garage. In the warm summer sun I set it up in the garage and back drive, and stripped off the ugly green. Underneath I found it had been stained that red of the 30’s. Talked to some friends more intelligent in refinishing than I was and they suggested Clorox, straight up, put on with a brush in bright sunlight. It transformed the table to the natural blonde of maple. Next was a good coat of urethane and we were good to go.

When we went to the Philippines the table went to brother #5 in Indianapolis. It lived with him for four years and came north to Michigan when we moved here. We set it up in the kitchen and it became the daily table for the family. There are drop leaves on the sides and those always caused a bit of consternation – more than one glass was broken by a kid accidentally kicking the flap underneath, and much milk mopped off the floor. But in terms of a table for raising kids, it was impermeable. It’s had everything imaginable that a child can drop dropped on top of it and there is hardly a dent.  A few “loved” spots.

Somewhere along the line it got small for five people, even with the drop leaves and the extra leaf, so we moved it upstairs and bought a round 50 inch table, keeping the chairs. Though it has served well for probably 25 years, it’s just not the sturdy maple of the old table. But it’s bigger, and with a leaf can seat eight. 

When the Driver got married she adopted the maple table and, with her, it went to North Carolina and then to Ohio. When she moved to Macau it came home, and then went back to Philadelphia with the Dragon when she returned from Alaska. Somewhere along the way in the late 2000’s the Driver and the Dragon swapped tables, giving the Dragon the Driver’s larger glass topped table. Then it was switched again, when small children at the Driver’s house began to knock the drop leaves down.

In late September, the Driver moved to Asia and the maple table came home again, and was put upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Most meals in this house are eaten by two people, and if there are more, there is a table that can seat 18 in the other room. On a whim, maybe of nostalgia, the maple table came downstairs  and the man of the house fixed the drop leaves with a lock on each side. Why didn’t we think of that 42 years, and a few pieces of broken china, ago? It is a bit worse for wear so the surface got a good sanding and two coats of semi-gloss urethane.

Nestled in the kitchen, topped with a poinsettia, glistening golden in the light, the old maple table reigns again.
The round table? It will stay in the Tribe. It’s already gone to the Engineer’s parents who got their house back from their third son. They need a table that will seat two, or four, or six, or eight…

Neighborhoods

Four years ago I said goodbye to a neighborhood on the other side of the world. Not my neighborhood, but where my daughter, the Driver, lived with the Tech. A neighborhood I had come to feel at home in. I remember walking those streets in south China my last afternoon, soaking up the atmosphere, imbedding it deeply in my mind so that even now, four years later, I close my eyes and am there, almost able to touch the color of the late day sun and smell the sesame and peanut bars.

Now, once again, I have said goodbye to a little corner of the world that I would never have known had not my daughter moved here. In four years of visits I have come to feel at home in the cluster of townhouses outside my nation’s campus. I find myself pausing at a window, drinking in the deep woods to the back, looking down on the greensward hill where young boys toss a football and my grands search for Easter eggs, watching for the UPS truck or the red fixit guy’s truck. Though I don’t know their names, the neighbors are familiar. The guy next door who was deployed in Afghanistan last year heads across the street with his sons following, the little Chinese girl on the other side seems to have grown a foot -- even the dogs are friends.

A neighborhood is a collection of small pieces: the library around the corner where I sat the other morning searching the children’s books on the topic of “moving,” the jeweler who repaired things for me, the Anglican pre-school, the sweet middle-aged couples in the block of townhouses who have deeply impacted the lives of Boy Blue and Mei Mei – celebrating their birthdays, finding books and magazines on bugs, bringing balloons and stashing gummy treats in their garages.

We’re walking back from a frozen yogurt run one night when a neighbor two blocks away calls, “I have parsley for your swallowtail caterpillars.” Three neighbors are having a dog conference on a sunny lawn, but seeing Boy Blue, conversation turns to bug collections. He is a familiar visitor to their gardens; they relish watching a little blonde boy with a butterfly net or a Tupperware collection tub. When they hear he’s moving across the world, they express both dismay at their loss but also excitement at his future. Boy and dogs snuggle before we head home.

If it takes a village to raise a child, this little neighborhood has labored together to help raise these two little grands. Four years ago it was Mr. Wong guarding the door to keep a tiny baby from being taken out too soon into the night air, collecting moths in the mailbox for Bye-Ren’s cats, wiping tears from his eyes as I bit him goodbye my last night. Today it is the bug collectors, the dog friends down the street, and a host of others.

I wipe my own tears.

Soon they head once again across the world. The Driver and the Tech will once again do the hard work to build a new life and make friends; Boy Blue and Mei Mei will melt hearts; God will once again create a neighborhood.

Building for eternity

“Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” 2 Cor 5:1

The little city that rises Labor Day weekend in the Michigan woods is not permanent. Though each year has strong similarities to the previous year, with neighbors rubbing up against last year’s neighbors, it is a fluid and mobile little community.

We arrive midday on Friday and find ourselves the first to set up camp. Savoring the silence of the wide fields and woods, we unpack, scope out the site, and begin to build our little weekend world. Slowly over the next six hours more families arrive, campers roll into place, tents are pitched, canopies raised. A small city emerges, built by human hands.

The genius is that this is a heavenly city, even if it is one built by human hands. These families gather because they want to live together once again, briefly, and share their lives and their Lord. For many, the yearly routine has stretched over decades. The little children of 30 years ago are the parents of today, and yesterday’s parents are now grandparents -- gray and a little less mobile, but here. Today’s little children only vaguely know there is history, but their very presence celebrates generational connection, year after year. They relish today, the freedom to run and yell and play, unfettered by fences and walls.

The weekend takes on a rhythm of its own. I rise early, knowing that already the Engineer is building a fire outside my tent, with either Bug or Joy Boy at his side, wrapped in a blanket. My job is to crank up the ancient Coleman stove and make coffee, and then begin the breakfast process. As our three generations gather around the table to eat, the scene is echoed up and down the line of tents and campers. Later we’ll explore the woods, the water, the slides and zipline, the bikes and bike paths. We’ll crowd into the rustic chapel and sing till the rafters rise, open our Bibles together and worship the Lord. Some in the group we know well, others are simply familiar faces we’ve seen other years. A little world, captured for a brief weekend, frozen in time.

By day children of all ages dash around the camp, parents watching and sharing the watch. “I’ve got the playground covered,” you hear, or “Anyone taking kids to the lake?” The teens actually unplug all their electronics and feast on soccer and zipline, the infamous blog at the waterfront, and messing around in boats like something out of “The Wind in the Willows.” There’s a bit of complaining at the lack of electronic media, but for the most part the sounds of their laughter almost rise above the little ones.

At night we tuck the little kids into bed and then gather around the fires, talking into the dark night about life, family, God, and more about life. As we huddle closer to get warm, we share deeply, listening and learning from each other. The messages are dissected and digested, and processed but our talk goes far beyond what is presented in chapel.


When Labor Day comes, the little city slowly disappears into the sunshine, one tent or camper at a time. By the time we leave, there is almost no one else around and once again the fields and woods stretch out untouched. We leave refreshed, restored, and renewed, even on weekends when the weather has been terrible and we’ve huddled under umbrellas.

We come knowing this will end, but also knowing, Lord wiling, we’ll come again. We recognize that living in celestial cities will never be long term on earth, but somehow, in the woods and fields and smoke, we’ve tasted a little bit of heaven.

All the while, year after year, decade after decade, we are looking for a city whose builder and maker is God.

Steinways in heaven

Are there Steinways in heaven? Or any instrument faintly resembling a nine-foot grand piano, highly polished, black and beautiful?

If there are, perhaps a small and gentle Chinese man, walking with a slightly awkward gait, comes before the Lord with a humble request.

“May I play for you? It is my offering of praise, of gratitude, of love for my great God, the Savior of my soul, the strength of my being, the One who gave me life and sustained me in want and in plenty.”

He sits carefully on the stool and arranges his coat. Not his long black overcoat with neck scarf flailing, but a neat suit, finely tailored to his slight stature. He bows his head and there is total silence. Then he places his stubby hands on the keys with reverence.

The music begins to lift from the instrument – music of all genre – symphonies, etudes, hymn arrangements, romances, barcarolles. Music that spans generations and centuries, that comes from years of memorization and study, from an intimate knowledge of compositions, and of the instrument. It rolls on and on. He plays with extreme delicacy at times, barely stroking the keys. He moves to intense fervor. The sound rises and soars and builds in strength. The man’s hands move faster and faster, and his head and shoulders take on life from his hands.

All heaven stops to listen and revels in the glory.

Finally, in a roaring crescendo, the music comes to a halt. Once again there is silence, and then a roar of praise erupts as multitudes stand, clapping their hands and lifting the praise offering as it if were their own.

The pianist rises slowly and nods, and then, with a gentle and somewhat hesitant smile, bows -- not to the crowd but to the Lord of the universe. The Lord reaches out His hand to his dear son, and says, “Any time, Samuel, *who bears my name. Any time!”

In Jerusalem the LORD of Heaven’s Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world. It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat. There he will remove the cloud of gloom, the shadow of death that hangs over the earth. He will swallow up death forever! The Sovereign LORD will wipe away all tears. Isaiah 25:6-8

*Samuel means One who bears the name of God

Generation to generation

A friend wrote yesterday that as he and his wife stood in the guest room of their daughter’s new home looking at the furniture from their families, stored for many years, they said to each other, “This has been a long time coming, but it was worth waiting.”

Another friend recently moved from overseas asked me where we bought our furniture and it brought me up short. Bought? Very little was ever bought – a recliner, mattresses, a few small pieces. No, my furniture is generational, and I love it.

Everyone takes naps on Lorena’s sofa, now in its third generation and who knows how many different upholstery colors. Somewhere I have a faded newspaper picture of my parents and my grandparents on that sofa at their 50th and 25th wedding anniversaries – August, 1953. Lorena’s high poster bed lives at the Dragon’s house, along with her folding desk. Her glass bookcase is upstairs in the red room.

Lewis’ desk is mine, but it detoured through my father’s hands for about 50 years. When I sit down, I feel the weight of the gentlemen who did serious work at that desk, and it sobers me at times. Both of their pictures look at me from under the glass top. Fitting reminders.

In the front hall is a washstand, one of six that Bernice lovingly saved for her six sons. Upstairs we use Bernice and Alvin’s dressers every single day. An iron bedstead in the next room came from her childhood home. Down the hall, maple bed frames take me back to my childhood when Clarence Sr. bought them for my room so he’d have a decent place to sleep when he came visiting from Atlanta. They were used hard, but a refinishing job and new mattresses brought them back to life again.

Lois’ chairs are often my spots for casual reading. The command post chair sat in her living room at the end of her life, comfortable and strategic beside her phone. From that chair she listened to the problems of a whole town and prayed for the world. Her Board reward rocker elegances my study. Out in the family room Russell’s chair is a favorite with the grands because it’s big enough for three kids. Jane’s rocker lives at the Dreamer’s house and has rocked her little ones.

The kitchen chairs remind me of our first apartment, a steal at $15 bucks including the maple table. The table lives with the Driver right now, but I have claim to it for my old age. My dining table belonged to Betty and Alice and fed multitudes before I got it. It continues to feed the world, opening to five wide leaves. The china cupboard came with our first house, for peanuts. The buffet that matches it lives with the Dreamer because I have Lois’ buffet. I remember her saving her honoraria from speaking engagements for years until the day came when she had enough to buy it. It’s not spectacular, but it holds meaning.

All these things are temporal. There will come a day when I give them away, or sell them, or they fall apart. But until then, instead of ghosts around the house, I have the memories of friends and family who are gone, but who left little traces of themselves behind.

The memories are rich and they continue to be made. I watch Joy-Boy climb up the side of Russell’s chair and tumble into it. He turns and grins at me and then proceeds to strip off his shoes and socks, tossing them to the floor. He laughs again, gives me a look, climbs over the other side of the chair and slowly drops himself down to the floor.

Not even once do I think to say, “Careful of the furniture, Jon.”

Full Circle

Nine years ago today my first grandchild was born, a tiny child named Keren Elyse – “Strength, consecrated to God.” Today I sat quietly in the place in Hawaii where, six years later, I was wakened in the early hours of a wet January morning with a phone call. Keren had slipped out of her earthly shell on the way to the hospital and entered heaven.

Full circle.

There are many firsts in life – first grandchild being one of those. Keren was an unusual first grandchild who taught me far more than I taught her. Her disabilities were severe, but her heart was huge and she loved us all fiercely. Nine years ago I would not have chosen a special needs child as my first grandchild, but God in his wisdom chose her. And I am forever changed and grateful that he did.

Losing the a grandchild suddenly, even when you know intellectually it could happen, is another first. I remember standing near her coffin with her next sister, the Bear, and talking about tents. The Bear was only three and working hard to understand the reality of death. We talked of how when we go camping we set up tents to shelter us. When we finish camping, we fold the tents and put them away. The tents are only temporary – but we are eternal. Somehow, that made sense to a three-year-old.

Coming back to where we were when we got that difficult phone call is another first. I was concerned that it would be painful, but it has not been. Time passes, grief is observed, grief is processed, and life goes on. The bustle of five boisterous grandchildren fills in the empty cracks left by the one who is gone. Keren is not gone – she is still part of the family.

It is difficult, though, in the bright sunset of the evening, looking across the blue of the bay, to feel anything but total peace. The birds are calling as the sun drops to the horizon. The noise of traffic faintly drifts up from the road far below. The smell of flowers permeates the growing dusk. I sit in silence and enjoy the still of the evening.

My life is richer because Keren lived, yet I am both stronger and more sensitive, because she died.

Wilderness, washing my soul

Bundling against the cold is the first step. Alaska socks, heavy hiking boots, jeans and fleece, covered with a lined jacket, warm scarf and ski hat, leather gloves stuffed in pockets – April-wear in the north.

The sun rose at seven in a giant red ball, sailing over scudding clouds on the horizon into a clear sky. By mid morning the lake calls, white caps dancing in the sunshine, gulls bobbing up and down amid the now-melting ice floes.

Before I head to the dense populated cities of Asia, I need wilderness. Walking the beach is sheer delight, even bundled against the stiff wind and well below freezing temperatures of the morning. If the gulls can bob in a frigid lake, I can handle the shoreline.

The rocks on the beach range from smaller than my finger to the size of small cars. Navigating between, along, among them is the reason for hiking boots with high ankle support. Ice and snow cling to the marshes in some places while others have melted into swampy puddles, rocks sticking up to tread across.

I think it is the color that calls me back, day after day -- one day blue, another aquamarine, another slate gray; never the same; always changing. The color and the solitude. There are no neighbors, almost no houses, and only a rare great ship on the horizon to remind me that somewhere in the universe other people exist.

A cry overhead brings a V of geese heading north. Theirs is a faith flight because I see no nesting ground that looks warm enough to lay eggs. Spring is breaking through, slowly, painfully letting go of the grip of winter. But come it will. This marsh will turn green and the scruffy bushes will spout leaves. The water will warm a little and the ice will disappear.

But that day is still distant this morning. I will relish the silence, broken only by the call of the gulls. I will wash my soul in the deep blue water of the still frosty great lake. I will listen to the wind roaring through the cedars on the cove, and the brash splashing of the waves hitting the ice along the shore.

In a few short days I’ll be walking crowded city streets halfway around the world, surrounded by thousands of people, enveloped in the din of languages that I do not understand. The friendships will be deep and rich, and the work satisfying, but when it all seems overwhelming, I will remember this day.

In my mind I will hark back to this solitude and rest there, drawing strength from the One who made it all, the din and the silence.

Plain speaking

The Bear bursts in the door, smelling of snow and kindergarten and sees her great-aunt, visiting from Paraguay. “I sure haven’t seen you for a long, long time,” she says. I make introductions, not knowing whether Bear really remembers great-aunt or not.

The Bug giggles and says, “I don’t think I remember you.” Little Jon-boy walks in, gets his booster chair and starts pushing it to the table. A man of few words, he just knows it is lunch time and he’s hungry.

One of the refreshing things about small children is they tell it just like it is. Yes, we get interrupted and told much we maybe didn’t need to know, but there is no guile in these little people. Lunch is a running commentary.

“Why are there nuts in my grapefruit?” No, those are seeds

“There is corn in my chili. Mommy doesn’t put corn in chili.” I like corn in my chili, you like corn, so just eat it.

“ I have to have the blue cup. SHE can have the pink one because she’s little.” Oh really?

Some days the plain talk is about me. Like the day Bug told me I smelled old. When I asked for clarification, she looked puzzled and said I dunno, maybe it is your shampoo.

A checker game with Bear ensues after lunch. Bear believes that she should win, hands down and is a little shocked when her pieces disappear off the board in rapid succession.

“You are taking all my pieces. How can I win if you keep jumping me?”

“How can you learn to play,” I counter, “if I let you just win and don’t teach you strategy?”

Bear looks over at the great-aunt, now playing trucks with Jon-boy. “I bet she’d let me win.”

“You don’t want to play with her,” I say. “She’s more competitive than I am.”

In the end, we play two games, and on the second I do some massaging of her technique. At five, I do not expect checker prowess or great strategy, but I will speak plainly, and not just allow her to break all the rules so she can win. Life doesn’t work that way, and it is a poor orientation to reality.

Plain speaking goes both directions. It comes from the very young, and they need to learn how to be polite. It comes from the older adults and they need to speak with grace. But plain speaking is essential to learning character, and I want these children to have character. Their parents are leading them in godly thinking, and it’s my job to reinforce that with godly mentoring, not sabotage what goes on at home.

As they head out the door, Bear turns to the great-aunt. “Are you going to be here tomorrow? I want to see you again, you know.” Plain speaking. Well spoken. Polite. Gracious.

Just a spoonful of sugar

A fun event for ESL learners over the last few years has been a cookie decorating party at Christmas. Most of these internationals come from Asia or the Middle East and did not grow up with ovens. Thus, they do not know how to bake and Christmas cookies, that essential of American Christmas, are a mystery to them.

We gather at our house on a mid-December evening and turn the kitchen into total chaos. Each of the ESL teachers brings plain cookies and decorating stuff, and the families all gather around the big center island and decorate the cookies to take home. Last night we had 12 adults and 8 children ranging from 10 down to 3. You can imagine the amount of colored sugar and icing that hit the floor!

The kids last about 30 minutes and then spin off to the Lego in the family room or the games in the living/dining room, bouncing back in turns to do another cookie or two. There is much consumption. The husbands, brought along to enjoy the fun, last about as long as the kids. Most are engineers, and they drift off to the dining room for a little more adult conversation. This leaves the women in the kitchen and conversation – the whole goal of the class – ranges far and wide.

Yesterday one of the Chinese women had a minor car accident on the icy roads. A Middle Eastern woman is on her third winter in Michigan and three of the Chinese women listen intently as she describes how to drive on ice and not slide into the ditch. Fascinating to hear this described by someone who has learned winter driving on the fast track. Lots of new vocabulary!

Cooking practices always surface in the conversation, and a lot of parenting discussions. Two of the ESL teachers are moms of younger kids and great mentors to these women struggling to survive, keep house, speak English, and raise children in a totally new world.

The children are a delightful mix of cultures, blond heads alongside dark ones. English is no problem for them, nor is social interaction. They are the next generation of new Americans, and cookies are to be consumed – no matter who made them or decorated them.

By the time the evening ends, I am quite ready for it to end. But as each family walks out the door bearing freshly decorated cookies of their own design, chatting merrily with each other in somewhat fractured English but English none the less, the value of the event takes root. This is not about sugar on the floor or icing on the cupboards – it’s about community.

Push back the darkness

It is December, the darkest month of the year. And the most celebrated. I wake in darkness and start the day. The afternoon is dark before it is over, and we settled into darkness long before supper. We light candles and put up twinkle lights and push back the darkness.

We celebrate the birth of the Savior with joy, but always in the corners of our hearts lingers sadness at those who are not with us this Christmas. Even in the delight of the coming of Light, we know that He came to a dark world, and we know why.

We know why because we live in it.

Yesterday the Dreamer and I stood in line at a funeral to speak to a young couple who lost their stillborn daughter last week. Entering the church I was transported back decades to a simple funeral at a barrio church in the Philippines. I can still clearly see the grieving mother, veiled, throwing dirt on the little coffin.

Yesterday’s mother is American born, but she is also Filipino, and the obligatory funeral black was worn by all her family and friends.

Beside us in line was a friend who lost his daughter just two years ago this month, a young mom snatched with sudden cancer. “It never gets easier, does it?” he said. “I will never be the same.” Then he looked at the Dreamer and said, “You know.” The same words the grandmother of the little one who didn’t live had said a few minutes before. “You know.”

Yes, we know. The Dreamer knows especially. On the way she handed me a book written by a mom who carried a child she knew would not live. Delivered and buried a child who survived just a few short hours. Poignant, powerful book. She readily admits that she does not have answers. She shares her struggle and grief. And she believes that God also shares our struggle and grief.

When Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, Mary and Martha were also weeping. But theirs was the wail of loss, while his was the weeping of pain for the hurt hearts of his dear friends. He knew in a few minutes he would call Lazarus out of the grave, but he also knew Lazarus would die again and there would again be pain and tears.

This week another little one, another grand of mine, will have doctors open her heart to repair what is not what it should be. I enter the week with deep fear because I know that what is considered routine is never routine when it is your own child. I enter the week with trust because, without speaking flippantly, I know that God understands our fear, her heart, and holds the hands of the doctors.

This is a dark world. Not just in December, though somehow at Christmas all the darkness comes rushing back to haunt us and whispers fear into the deep recesses of our hearts. Yet it was into this world that God sent Light, and the darkness did, and still does not comprehend it.

In this dark month, I choose to stand in the light.

Rescue centers

Recent Sundays have found me in rescue centers. The people who go there call them church, but they are, in fact, places where those people have been rescued.

The first sits atop a rocky hill in northern Massachusetts, close to the ocean. The town is as rocky as the hillside, full of rough and tumble families who either have known the hardship of the sea for generations, or who are new immigrants looking for a place to call home.

The anniversary of the church – the rescue center – was occasion for testimonies. After a meal where far more people came than anticipated but all were fed, we gathered in the upstairs meeting room. Pine timbers line the walls, wide windows opening onto the woods and rocky hillside. Member after member, some still there, some who have moved away, stood to tell how they came to this place. Their lives were a saga of alcohol, abuse, bad marriages, unwanted pregnancies, despair. Again and again I heard, “I came and I was welcomed, and I found the Lord here. Jesus has changed my life completely.” Everyone wanted to be there and share the victories.

The highest corner of the church building is a replica of a lighthouse. It is symbolic of the rocky coastal town, but it is far more. It represents why this is a rescue center.

This past weekend it was a much older church on the coast of New Jersey. The city is hard, gritty, and sinful. Yet the old stone church stands in the midst of casinos and on the roof are the words, “Christ died for our sins.”

The folk who come are a rainbow of colors and a babble of languages.

Saturday night the woman beside me told me, unasked, about her abusive, drug-dealing husband, how in desperation one afternoon she knocked on her landlady’s door when he locked her out, and how she was invited in to a warm meal, taken to church, and led to Christ. Sunday noon another woman told me that she comes because it is a safe haven in her pain-ridden life. “I went to the pastor when I first came and said I needed a safe-house. He told me I had found it.”

Sunday morning we sang an old hymn about keeping the lower lights burning. Sending a beam across the wave. The pastor reminded us that we are the lower lights, gleaming for people who are struggling in the dark.

Rescue center churches are messy. People often don’t dress well, and they may smell of smoke and booze and other substances. Their teeth tend to be missing, and they are brutally honest about their lives. Downright uncomfortable at times but rescue center churches are good for me.

Jesus is in the rescue center business. Am I?

The orchard

Like a siren the orchard calls me this afternoon. The day is as crisp and clean as the first bite of a Granny Smith, and I need to be outside. I load boxes into the trunk and head north. This orchard is relatively small and family owned. On a weekday we have permission to simply arrive, park, and pick up any apples on the ground. The windfalls can’t be used for anything, so they are there to be gleaned. I find the owner sorting pumpkins and check in.

Then I see that road I usually take back beside the barn is blocked.

“It was muddy so we had a load of crushed ashphalt dumped,” she tells me in good Michiganese. Does anywhere else put an extra h in asphalt? We ponder how to get my car into the orchard since, unlike the tractor and wagon, I can’t just drive over the newly dumped piles. At her suggestion I take down one of the split rail fences, drive across the lawn, between massive pines, back around the cider press building, down between a row of apple trees and onto the road that leads across the hill and the orchard.

I drive to the back, knowing from experience that the trees in the back drop later than the trees in the front. Applesauce is best if made from a mix of apples, so I make no attempt to pick and choose specific breeds. My goal is to glean, fill boxes, and head home.

The seductive sunshine, the faint smell of fallen leaves mixed with apples, and memories slow me down. The siren has called again. In the distance I hear a highway, a dog barks faintly, but for all that I am alone in the world with just a few yellow jackets for companions. Many times I’ve come to this orchard. Hot September days with Keren in a stroller, a sunny morning with just the Bear – so small she could hardly get her boots through the long grass. Two years ago we had a gaggle of little cousins ranging from Boy Blue on a blanket on up. Little hands helping gather, then joining the applesauce process with glee. Some years it has been pouring rain and we come home soaked to the skin and covered with mud. Always an adventure. But time is flying and I need to get the apples home.

I take a bucket and head up a hill, down a long row of trees. Toward the back I find a treasure trove of bright red dotting the ground under two trees. One by one my bucket fills, gets emptied into boxes, and fills again. Soon the trunk is loaded with red and gold.

I head back the lines of trees, past the cider press, wave to the pumpkin sorter, weave under the pines and through the split rail fence. Then, relishing the final moments, I choose the gravel roads wherever possible so I can drive under canopies of gold and red. Autumn will pass and this glory will fade into winter, but before I start making applesauce, I want to revel in the color a little longer.

A home on the hill

We start up the hill a sense of anticipation, turn after turn, and finally pull into the driveway at the very top. Initially it seemed impossible to find this house, but now it is second nature. We park, look out over the valley, smell the fresh country air, grab our bags, and head inside. Through the garage, into the little back room, through the long room that is living, dining, and kitchen all in one. Around the corner and up the stairs, and down the hall to our suite of rooms.

A certain scent belongs to this home away from home. It could be the continuous supply of fresh fruit on the butcher block in the kitchen, but more likely it is the scent of fabric. This is a quilter’s home and there are quilts for wounded military and homeless kids always in progress. Interesting country crafts are tucked in the corners, baskets on the rafters, vintage country furniture that looks and feels comfortable.

When the host family is home we enjoy their company, go out for sushi, play Settlers, talk long into the night. But the house is ours when needed, whether or not they are home.

Home, a word that evokes deep visceral emotions. Home -- and this is just one of many.

Another home away from home is near a college campus. The routine there similar. We know where our beds are, where to set up our computers, where the coffee will be brewing in the dark of early morning. The hosts are friends of decades, and their home has been ours on three continents.

A third is a suite north of Boston. A full apartment set off a house where the grandmother lived for a time. Now it hosts visitors, ministry people like us who need a place to land that offers sleep, respite, quiet, and no people. Here the relationship stretches back even further.

Yet another is a wide windowed home facing out on a great lake. No neighbors ever intrude the solitude except for deer, turkeys, fox, and other creatures of the wild. The silence is deafening.

In all these places, and many more, we are at home. The generosity of these host families offers us more than a clean bed. In each place we have the freedom to come, to go, to live, to think, to be – with no strings attached.

I’m heading out the door of the house on the hill in the early morning when my phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket and hear a friend’s voice, “Hey, I’m looking for the car keys.” I tell her where to find them and realize that, while I am at the house on the hill, another of our home-away-from-home hostesses is at my house, ready to drive off in my car.

Home away from home is a lifestyle.

Chinese, croquet, and cuisine

The new croquet set from Lehman’s hardware is accurately laid out across the lawn, the gas grill pulled nearer the back door, and the fire pit set up beside it. Chairs culled from various spots around the house and garage scatter across the patio. Dogs and burgers, buns, stowed in the fridge. Vats of drinks and ice.

At 4:30 the first car pulls in the drive and the fun began. Families who are all new Americans, mostly Chinese with a sprinkling of other ethnics, and a few long term residents gather for a late summer picnic. Soon the kitchen island groans with a wide assortment of food – homemade dumplings beside pasta salad, noodles beside vegetable dishes, garden fresh melon and tomatoes, hummus and pita chips. The grill is cranked up and soon the aroma of burgers and dogs mixes with the international flavors.

Levi, 16, long, and lean, arrived back yesterday from a summer visiting his grandparents in China. After his fourth burger, I stopped counting. Must have been a long summer for his now very American tastebuds. In contrast, Jon-boy, only a year old, consumes three large pork filled baozhi. A Chinese granny sits in front of him to pick up the pieces and hand him more, charmed that a little blonde and blue eyed boy would eat her dumplings with such obvious relish, both fists holding the treasures as he tosses them off one after another.

The men and boys take on croquet – Chinese, American, and Jordanian competing in mostly English and learning the rules as they go. The Chinese women cluster, disperse, and cluster again to talk. They have all known each other since they were young brides and new in this country but they rarely get to see each other now that they have settled all around the city. I look at the teens chowing down on all the food and remember their births, one by one, over a decade ago.

The girls, fifteen down to five, flit around from the food, to Frisbees, to Lego, to talking, and finally settle down around the fire pit with me to roast marshmallows. They knew they liked marshmallows, but they had never roasted them alone without parents hovering nearby. Their dads are playing croquet and their moms are far too occupied with seeing old friends to worry about the kids and the fire. We have a lesson in the fine art of gently golden marshmallows on old camping forks.

The Bug, sitting beside me on the grass with hot dog in hand, comments, “There are a LOT of Chinese kids here.” Interesting that at three she knows they are Chinese but it is neither unusual nor a problem. Soon she’s off running with the youngest one, blonde hair flying behind the dark hair of her new friend.

Just a late summer night in Michigan. A reunion that crosses cultures and years. A last fling before the fall school schedule cramps everyone into a rigid pace of life. Smoke rises from the fire pit as the sun drops low in the sky. Tired and a little sticky, children and teens pile into cars with their parents and head home. Well worth the effort.

Life

“Ten fingers, ten toes - our most popular model!” comments a friend on the other end of the country on a picture of little Mei Mei’s feet in her mother’s hands. Something we take for granted. A normal, healthy child.

I don’t, actually. Each normal child reminds me that the first grand was different, her first week lived with held breath, and life forever changed. Yet, even we who have lived that trauma tend to get lulled into complacency when all goes well.

This birth, and the brother two years ago on the other side of the world, done so simply, so quickly, a knife, a lift, a baby. Yet, how different it would be if there were not good hospitals and skilled doctors. In a different world, in a different generation, we could easily have lost the baby, or the mother, or both.

Which brings me back to life. Ten fingers and ten toes. Little head, ears, nose, mouth. All parts in place and functioning well. Perfectly made and precisely positioned. No errors, no displaced parts, all systems go.

How often do I stop and ponder the wonder of it all?

A little lump of humanity is curled up comfortably in my lap sound asleep. She is so small she doesn’t cover my lap, but curls over one leg and tucks her tiny feet down the middle. Only five days old, she hasn’t stretched out yet except when her legs are deliberately pulled out. The “fetal” position has new meaning. She’s out in the real world, but she’s not yet sure that out is all that wonderful.

And yet, in five days she has established herself. People come to visit her. Her brother kisses her feet goodbye. Gifts arrive for her. Occasionally she even raises her voice and makes a statement. In between she snuggles, or wriggles, or snuffles, or yawns.

Seven pounds of humanity bundled into a little body. Seven pounds of unlimited potential.

Life. Nothing like it. Ten fingers and ten toes. Our most popular model.

A second soul

“When you learn a second language, you gain a second soul” says an old proverb. I suggest that when you live extensively in a second country you gain a second soul, whether you conquer the language or not. Re-entry to my own native country is never easy, though deeply appreciated.

I am certainly not alone in bi-country living. There are people all over the globe who do it and do it well. Doing it, though, I would posit, is never seamless.

My first days back my mind races, slows, and races again. In the market the only people who look “normal” are Asian. I find myself searching their faces for recognition. Life in recent weeks has been such a routine of meeting familiar faces on the street to and from places, in the stores, stopping to chat and catch up. I am at a loss because these faces look “right” but none of them are people I know. Where did my neighborhood go?

Snatches of Chinese stick to my brain. I go so say something and the words come out wrong. It’s not because I speak good Chinese, but because terminology for life changes when one changes countries, and the Chinese term for what is in front of me has moved to the front of the brain, pushing the English to the back.

When I lay down to sleep, my mind goes into overdrive. I’m walking the streets of the city I have left behind with friends I will not see again for months and months. I can’t quite catch the conversations, but the places are real and I am visually and mentally 12 hours and thousands of miles away – until I wake and find myself at home.

My granddaughter, the Bear, now a very articulate five, tells me, “You were gone to that China place a very long time.”

“Yes, Bear, I was.”

I am glad to be home, no mistake about that. This is space, comfort, familiar. But that also became space, comfort, and familiar. A different normal. A different familiar. A second soul.

I have said before and will say again: part of me never comes back. Part of me is still tasting a new tea with my tea expert buddy, striding the hot streets to the subway with a fellow teammate, listening to the heart of a university teacher who struggles with the restrictions they face in their work world, laughing at situations that simply don’t translate to funny back here.

Bear realizes that I will disappear at times to that China place, or other equally distant places. She’s old enough now to know that her grandparents, both sides, live in several worlds, but continue to return to hers. Some day, I suspect, she too will take off and explore other worlds and gain other souls.

That’s the heritage I’d like to leave behind. This world is not my home, nor is that other one, but only the eventual, eternal home. I want to see the next generation be world citizens too because in so doing, they will understand that people are more the same than different, and that their God is not a western God nor their faith tied to their culture.

Give it to God

It was the end of an email from a friend who doesn’t do much of the God thing, but the advice was right on target for this week. “Tough choices today,” the email said, “as there have been tough choices before. You do what you can, you make the calls as you see them, and give it to God.”

It’s a week of giving it to God.

Packing to leave for the other side of the world and the piles are beginning to mount up in the room where I pack. I keep thinking of things I still need to find, or uncover, or locate and it becomes a blur. So I give it to God.

An elderly aunt has landed in the hospital this week with serious heart issues. I can’t stop what I’m doing and go to be with her. I’d like to do that, but it just isn’t possible -- so I give it to God.

The Driver and Tech are waiting to hear about a potential job but no word is coming through. There’s nothing I can do to help but listen, and I give it to God.

My husband has a pinched nerve in his back. This is NOT the best week for a pinched nerve. Why does this stuff happen when we are under pressure? Oh, probably because we ARE under pressure, it happens. So, since I cannot fix his back, I give it to God because after all, God made his back and knows all about it.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

I opened Isaiah this afternoon and landed on these words:
“I am the one who creates the light and makes the darkness. I am the one who sends good times and bad times. I, the Lord, am the one who does these things. Open up, O heavens, and pour out your righteousness. Let the earth open wide so salvation and righteousness can sprout up together. I, the Lord, created them.” (Isa 45:7-8)

When I get overwhelmed and feel like the choices in front of me are too much, swirling around me, pushing me down, I need to stop and remember who is in control of eternity, and today’s choices.

The heavens opened a little while ago and poured out rain. I cannot make it rain or make it stop, so I simply watch it happen, and wonder at the power of it all. There is a gaggle of robins prancing around in the dusk on the soaked grass, finding worms and grubs for dinner that the rain brought to the surface. I bet they wake up every morning and give the day to God.

I’ll do that tomorrow with them.

Faster than a...

Computer in lap, I sit in a chilly airport, waiting for a flight. Attendants deployed to Buffalo. Searching for more. Fog and rain persist outside the window, but this is an island of total calm in a week faster than a speeding bullet, or light, or any number of other ragged, worn similes.

Change is life. Life is change. No change, end of sentence.

There are days when I stop and ponder if I can possibly cram more learning into my brain. Days when my fingers hover over the keys, searching the screen for clues, plunging into uncharted territory. Did I get the URL in the right spot? Does the link work? Did I remember to translate the data to a neutral pad before posting it? Will I crash the whole website?

And yet, my world has rapidly become more nimble and multi-dimensional; hence I must too

Other questions hover close by during this, my yearly planning week. What systems work best in 2010? Where should I invest my time? Which projects are high priority among the many clamoring for attention? Is my blood pressure up because I’m balancing too many plates in the air, or does this pace just keep my mind alive and well?.

And then, the ultimate question. As I move forward, sometimes at warp speed, have I allowed space for the Holy Spirit in my own life, and in my workday? I’m not trying to suddenly go spiritual – illustration, question, plunge in the knife. I am not questioning the need for change. I’m simply examining my heart.

God is more than capable of keeping pace with change. The God who designed the speed of light and the mechanics of the speeding bullet is far greater than my time and space. I would say God is the author of change. Change is not a moral quantity. Good and evil are not inherent in technology or lack thereof, in systems, in methods. It is how we use the tool that adds the value.

I also believe that God makes us as we are. God made some who contemplate while others are designed to move. Marys and Marthas. Yet Mary received the commendation while Martha was both the scolder and the scolded.

So while moving at warp speed, I need to seek Mary moments, and remind myself not to have a Martha tongue. I am forced to examine whether it is the excitement of change and speed that brings me a high or the fact that the new system, new accomplishment, new learning is something God has put in front of me for His use.

Flight staff arrive and are deployed. It’s time to board and fly. I’ll move my contemplative spirit from the terminal to the plane, put away my technology and saturate myself in something that is older than time but changes daily to meet the new demands. There’s a little Bible in my bag.

I think I need some Mary time while I fly.