On Faith

Easter echoes

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

Easter morning. I am six. My little sister is four. We’ve torn apart our Easter baskets. The green plastic grass is strewn all over and we’ve eaten the heads off our hollow chocolate bunnies. We didn’t go to church because Mama isn’t feeling well. She has trouble with her back and sits in traction for a while every day, in a chair by the bedroom with her chin in a sling that hangs from the top of the door. I am in the kitchen when the phone rings and she comes to answer it.

Oh no, she says. Oh, no. She starts to cry. Tears stream down her cheeks.

Listening to her side of the conversation with her friend from church, I learn that our pastor died this morning. At church. Standing at the pulpit to give his sermon when he sank to the floor. People thought at first he was kneeling to pray, strange for a Baptist, but…it is Easter…

In the days to come, the church people will comfort each another by saying this is exactly how he’d have wanted to go.

*******

Easter morning. I am eighteen. I’m not in church. I quit going a few years ago. I have been cutting my college classes more and more to run with my colorful theater crowd. I’ve decided to make my living perfoming on stage. It’s all I care about. My aunt, Mama’s sister who never married nor had children, says I’m “caught between the moon and New York City.” Deep down I know this is not the best that I can do: I don’t want to be at home anymore, I’m not getting along with my father, my grandmother is worried about me. I know she prays, because…

I have lost my way.

*******

Easter morning. I am nineteen. I am not in church, but I’m looking at a card that arrived at the end of the week. A beautiful Easter card from Miss Margaret. I didn’t know she had my address. I met her during my recent hospital stay, when I ran a high fever with a virus and needed an IV. Miss Margaret was my roommate. A large Black lady with a beautiful smile and a voice as warm as as a blanket. She was in for a mastectomy. She’d asked me, just before I left and before she went for surgery: Do you go to church?

No, ma’am, not like I should…(I didn’t say not at all).

Hmm, she replied. That young man who’s come to see you. Brought you those flowers. Have you been going out with him for long?

No, ma’am. I haven’t been out with him at all yet, actually. I got sick on the day of our first date and ended up here instead…it was also opening night of the play we were both in and I missed that, too.

What I didn’t tell Miss Margaret is that I was afraid the guy would give up on me…but he hadn’t, yet.

She nodded. Listen to me, Child. You are young. Watch out for yourself, hear? He seems a nice young man. You ought to get yourself back to church.

So here I am on Easter morning, not in church, looking at this card she mailed me… an Easter prayer signed Love and Blessings Always from Miss Margaret, P.S. I’m doing fine.

II wonder: Is it too late to get to church today?

I call my boyfriend.

*******

Easter morning. I am twenty-one. I’ve come back to my childhood church with my husband…the guy who didn’t give up on me when I got sick and missed our first date as well as opening night of the community theater production we were both performing in…a play entitled “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” We’ve been married for a year and a half, we’re both working, we just left our one-bedroom apartment for a new townhouse, first time homeowners. Up until these last months, we thought we would move to New York and pursue acting careers. I’ve been accepted to The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and they have allowed me a grace period to come….if we can figure out how we are going to afford to live there.

But my husband has recently told me: Honey…we need to talk.

And then he just says it: I know God’s calling me to preach.

His beautiful face is so earnest. I tell him the only thing I know to say: If He’s really calling you, then you have to try.

The huge sanctuary is packed today. Hundreds of people. The pastor has been here for fifteen years, the successor of the one who died here on that long-ago Easter morning. Today he preaches from Acts 17, Paul addressing the Areopagus on the resurrection of Christ; Paul is mocked, but one man and one woman are called out here in the passage by name for joining him in belief: Dionysious and Damaris.

When the pastor offers the invitation, I grab my husband’s hand: We are rededicating our lives today.

We walk the aisle. In all that crowd, we are the only ones who do: One man, one woman.

I tell my pastor that my husband is called to preach.

He will take him under his wing, the fifty-third and final young man he ordains to the ministry.

He will tell us later: It won’t be easy; I had to step into the pulpit of a man who died there. But the Lord will provide. He always comes through…sometimes at last minute when you are thinking all is lost, but He always comes through.

Then he’ll look at me: You were in my teen Bible School class, I recall. It’s been a while. I remember you coming to church with your mother when you were a child. Your dad didn’t attend and your mother didn’t drive.

Yes, sir. That’s right. My dad works most Sundays. Mama didn’t drive. She’s just recently gotten her license.

He will nod: You walked to church until we got our bus ministry started. Your mother was the first person to sign up for it.

I didn’t know that.

*******

Easter morning. I am twenty-five. Life is a blur with a baby boy to care for. I meant to change the old wreath hanging on the front of the parsonage, over by the wide porch swing. When the weather is warmer I will sit here and sing to him, but right now it’s still a little chilly, with the beach breezes blowing up from the bay. Before we go to church, I will put up the Easter wreath. Better late than never.

When I reach for the tattered old wreath, a bird flies out, startling me. There’s a nest in it, with babies cheeping… I had no idea.

Awed by the discovery of brand-new life on this particular morning, I let it be.

I save the new Easter wreath for next year.

*****

Easter afternoon. I am thirty. My family is gathered at the Baptist church in Daddy’s hometown for the funeral of his sister, my aunt. She was fifty-four, spent the last years of her short life in a nursing home, bedridden with mutliple sclerosis. For all of these years my grandmother drove a sixty-mile round trip each week to visit, taking her daughter’s soiled laundry home and returning it fresh and clean, and trimming her nails because the nursing staff said they weren’t allowed to.

Beside her in the pew, Daddy is pale. He’s recovering from a heart attack and four bypasses.

When my husband and I followed the limo to the church, I could see Daddy and Grandaddy in the back of it, side by side…two silver heads, exactly alike.

Grandma is broken but her faith is not. She says, I’m truly glad she isn’t suffering any more but oh, it hurts. It hurts.

She died on Good Friday, Grandma, I tell her. Like Jesus.

Grandma looks at me a long moment, her watery blue eyes gleaming: I can’t belive I haven’t thought of that.

The service begins. On Grandma’s other side, Granddaddy bows his head. Tears are trickling down his cheeks.

This is the only time I’ve ever seen him cry.

*******

Easter morning. I am thirty-seven. My husband and our boys have only been in our new house for a month and I’m still scrambling to get organized. I love the house, not that I wasn’t grateful for parsonages having been provided all these years, it’s just that eventually we will retire and you can’t do that in a parsonage. Plus…I can’t say exactly why, but this place somehow reminds me of my grandparents’ home. The great irony being that they’ll never see it. None of my childhood family will. Granddaddy’s been gone four years. Grandma’s in the nursing home; she’ll never travel again. Daddy died suddenly seven months ago and I’m still trying to process it, especially since everything fell apart with my mother afterward and there will be no repairing the ripping apart of our family…I think about how she took me and my sister to church…how she was the frst person to sign up for the bus ministry…I have to remember the good, I must choose to remember the good, for it was there and real and even though a person may be destructive with those wheels already in motion long before she brings you onto the planet, there were always good things.

I cannot dwell on this anymore, I have two children of my own to get ready for church now and Easter is our biggest day…it really won’t do for the preacher’s wife to be late. Again.

*****

Easter morning. Today. Let’s just say my fifties will soon be coming to a close. Depending on when you read this, I will either be headed to church or having returned home. My husband is still preaching. Our oldest is in his fifth year of pastoring a church nearby, close enough that our two granddaughters come over often, including these past couple of days, to play with their Franna. Our daughter-in-law is an extraordinary pastor’s wife and mother as well as an incredible artist. So many gifts. Our youngest is playing piano for today’s worship service and he’ll sing the solo for the choir on “Rise Again” in his beautiful, beautiful voice… his fiancee is deeply compassionate, loving, always smiling. They are happy. Yesterday I wrote of digging the past and mining your memories for the stories that matter…today I write, my heart overflowing with abundance of life, for now, now, now. Today I write of the peace that passes understanding, for with God, the story does not end. The message of Easter that echoes through the ages is not one of death, but of life; not of lost causes, but of new purpose; not of despair, but of overcoming…it is a message of redemption, sacrificial love, forgiving, being set free. I think of those words, rise again, as I drive out of my neighborhood to see a hawk take flight, the morning sun flashing on its white belly, and discovering, that same day, the house finches have, indeed, built a new nest in the front door wreath, despite last year’s tragedy of all five babies dying here suddenly. The mother began laying eggs during Holy Week.

Five of them.

The father sang a beautiful song after each egg was laid.

A song of new life, hope, and joy.

I know it so, so well.

The echoes of Easter.

*******

Composed for the 31st and last day of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

—thank you all for being such a loving, supportive community;
please keep writing ❤

Angels

/ Fran Haley / 21 Comments

There are times in life when a theme chases you, and you find you need to write about it.

Such is the case today.

Angels.

They keep reappearing.

There’s the neighborhood rooster I wrote about on Sunday, and the ancient Muslim belief that a rooster crows because it has seen an angel.

There’s the memoir Angela’s Ashes that I returned to for my St. Patrick’s Day post, wherein author Frank McCourt’s mother keeps having babies and his father says an angel brings them, specifically the Angel of the Seventh Step, where he claims to have found Frank’s newest baby brother. Young Frank starts looking for the angel. When he wakes in the night, he goes to check the seventh step: Sometimes I’m sure there’s a light there and if everyone’s asleep I sit on the step in case the angel might be bringing another baby or just coming for visit…I’m sure the angel is there and I tell him all the things you can’t tell your mother or father for fear of being hit on the head or told to go out and play.…

There’s my husband’s sermon series over the last months, in which he mentioned times of trial, temptation, suffering, and the appearance of ministering angels, with this repeated exhortation that I scribbled down on two different Sunday order-of-worship bulletins: Look for the angels.

There’s his sermon this past Sunday, which referenced the greedy soothsayer, Balaam, and his donkey which refused, three times, to not travel down the road where the increasingly irate Balaam was trying to direct it, because the donkey could see the angel of the Lord there with a drawn sword when Balaam could not; and haven’t we all experienced, in some way or other, animals seeing what we can’t? (Remember the rooster…).

There’s another book I pulled off my shelf this week, The Art of Comforting, in which author Val Walker tells of being diagnosed with premature ovarian failure; she will never have the child she’s longed for. Shortly afterward she’s laid off from her job in a massive downsizing. As her husband goes away on a business trip, she cries for the loss of the life she thought she’d been destined to live: “My angel books and angel music could no longer comfort me. I prayed to God to send me a real angel. I was ready for a bona fide spiritual visit from heaven.” To her shock, the doorbell rings…chiding herself for thinking it could really be an angel, she answers it to find a “small, sweaty man in a filthy T-shirt and muddy shoes. He must have been one of the laborers working on my neighbor’s lawn…” and with him is a golden retriever, staring at her, wagging its tail.

Turns out the man has come to ask, in broken English, if this is her dog (it’s not). He then asks for water for the animal; it’s a terribly hot day. Walker gives a bowl of water to the dog. She offers a glass to the man. The visitors leave together, and she reflects: Just ten minutes earlier, desperate enough to go begging to God, I had prayed for a brilliant, glowing angel to come to me…was this stranger my angel? I don’t know. But I do know that in witnessing his beautiful kindness toward that dog I was reassured that comforting still existed on earth…always remember, comfort is all around us. We are never alone.

I’m not sure the man was the angel, either.

I’m pretty sure the dog was.

Then there are experiences much closer to home, some of which I shared in yesterday’s post with my “Bad things are going to happen” poem.

There was my husband’s diagnosis of ocular melanoma…shortly after which, while driving and contemplating having his eye removed, he stopped at a traffic light and saw, he says, the brightest flash of white light before him. Nothing was there to cause such a flash. He’d never experienced anything like it before. Optical illusion? Maybe. Stress? Possibly. But he said he was instantly flooded with comfort and knew everything would be okay.

And it was.

Then there was his cardiac arrest on a Sunday afternoon, driving home from the gym. He lost control of his truck; it veered into coming traffic, then crossed back over and ran off the road into a grove of trees…without striking anything. The last thing he remembers, as all went dark and peaceful, are voices saying He’s in trouble. We have to get him off the road.

Angels?

You decide.

As for me, I realize the words were written on my heart long before I scribbled them in the Sunday bulletins. I know, whatever the days may bring, or how long the darkest night may seem, in times of my greatest need, I’ll heed my preacher’s advice:

Look for the angels.

They’re all around us.

“backlit Golden Retriever“. theilr. CC BY-SA 2.0.

*******

Composed for Day 26 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Works cited:

McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir. New York, Scribner, 1996. (Pages 102-107)
Walker, Val. The Art of Comforting: What to Say and Do for People in Distress. New York, Penguin, 2010. (Pages 241-244)

Moments

/ Fran Haley / 27 Comments

Lines of an old hymn often play in my head:

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it while I get ready for work each morning, where, of late, there’s a heavy atmosphere of uncertainty and despair.

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it while having to drive through town instead of the scenic route by the pond, where the great blue heron lives, because a bridge is out, I’m told, for maybe a year or more (how can this be?).

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it while noticing and grieving dead animals by the roadside… beaver, groundhog, opossum, squirrel, cottontail rabbit, white-tail deer, dog, cat; a hawk that flew too low at the wrong time, its wide pale wing, patterned in distinctive dark-brown bars, angled up and over its body like a shroud; and so many skunks, their beautiful black-and-white fur rippling in the wind…sluggish from hibernation, they wandered into the road, never to wake again.

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it when I’m running late and traffic in the heart of town is backed up to an absurd degree (of course), making me turn off the main road for a side road, to save a few minutes…

That’s when I see the mural:


An ethereal moment calls for an etheree…

Breathe
deeply.
The moments
are soon passing
from you and from me…
let’s use them, not lose them
for every precious minute
sings unwritten song within it.
Breathe, and appreciate the moment.
Each, in itself, a sign of the divine.

Funny thing…I see the “Breathe” message on a most difficult morning; on the drive home that afternoon, just past the mural, a great blue heron passes overhead, strangely low and close. I have never seen one here before. It looks otherworldly, ancient, sailing along serenely, impossibly, with barely a beat of its wings.

great blue heron glides
on slow wingbeats of wisdom
breathing the moment

Great Blue Heron in Flight – (Ardea herodias). Milazzoyo. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

*******

Composed for Day 14 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Nature’s divine voice

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

“Nature is the infrastructure of our communities…Nature enriches us economically and culturally and historically, but it also enriches us spiritually. God talks to human beings through many vectors: Through organized religions and the great books of those religions, through the prophets and wise people, and through art and literature and music and poetry, but nowhere with the same detail and texture and grace and joy as through Creation. And when we destroy nature, we impoverish our children. We diminish their capacity—and our own—to sense the Divine, to understand who God is, and to grasp what our own potential is as human beings.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Confession

Before I started writing
in earnest
I didn’t know
how much
I love nature

I should have known
by the way
cicada summersong
stirs sacred memories

I should have known
by the certain slant
of light
on fiery autumn trees
there’s hope within
which never leaves

I should have known
from the brilliant beckoning
of silversharp stars
on a clear winter’s night
or by Venus,
glittering bright
over the ocean
as the sun rises
that the soul
must keep reaching
for what it cannot
grasp

I should have known
that once I start seeking
I will find
just as I discover hawks
perched high above me
every single time
I think to look up

I should have known
by the poignant scent
of fallen pines
and freshcut grass
that newness
returns
after the pain

I should have known
how much humans
have lost
by not living close
to the earth
as we were meant to
(as we did, in ages past)
or how this void
is behind
the longing
of every soul
crying out
for belonging
healing
restoration
and peace

I should have known
all things
are interconnected
and sustained

by the voice
speaking through
nature…

Before I started writing
in earnest
I didn’t know
how much
I love nature

but the important thing
is that I know it now

I will always know it, now

for, like finchsong
at my door,
untold glories
surround me

weaving their way
into my writings
so that I recognize
holy rhythms
of life

spoken into being
into my being

—let me listen
oh, let me listen.

One of last year’s baby bluebirds hanging out by its natal home, on my back deck

*******
Composed for Day 13 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Wedding music

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

Do you remember
riding around in my car
singing gospel songs

the old ones you loved
since you were a little kid?
Folks always told me

you have an old soul.
I said you were seventy
the day you were born.

Yet you’re still so young.
I wouldn’t trade anything
for hearing your voice

singing harmony
on those beautiful faith-songs
my own Granddaddy

would have known and loved.
Here’s another thing I want
you to remember:

I am forever
proud of your talent, your heart
for other people

your service to God
and the comfort you’re giving
to those suffering

their greatest losses.
You are a gift to us all.
And now, a blessing

comes to you straight from
Heaven, another of my
prayers answered.

I worried that you
wouldn’t meet anyone while
working funerals.

Me of little faith.
Never expected a girl
driving the hearse to

the crematory
would find you there and begin
a new life story.

As the families make
preparations for your day
I can’t help hearing

your voice echoing
from long ago when we rode
in my car, singing

that old-time song called
“Wedding Music” and you said
“Mom, this harmony

is so beautiful.”
It’s what I pray for you now
my beloved son

and your bride-to-be:
beautiful harmony for
your life together.

My son and his bride-to-be. Photo: Kailey B. Photography

The referenced song my musican son loves:

*******
Composed for Day 4 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers.

Tip: Try writing a story-poem in haiku syllables.

Love returns

/ Fran Haley / 3 Comments

In the fading light
on the last day of January, I hear it:

a loud, merry squawk! on the front porch.

First time I’ve heard that precious sound
since last April, when the silence set in
without warning, when the whole nestful
of beautiful finch fledglings in my door wreath
died.

Season after season, tiny life
came into being
on my portal,
taking wing from sky-blue eggs
to blue-egg sky, until the April day
when it stopped.

The hardest part of loss
apart from the emptiness
is the unanswered why.

For now we see through a glass darkly,
wrote the Apostle in his chapter on love.
Those words echo in my memory
as I look through the etched-glass window
of my door, where the silhouette
of the visitor perches on
the replacement wreath.

I don’t know, but I suspect
he’s the father, returning to
scout for a safe nesting-place
as in seasons past.

I don’t know if I am hoping
he’ll choose this wreath
as bird courtship
goes into full swing.

I don’t know, here on the cusp
of Valentine’s Day, if my heart
is willing to risk
giving itself away
after such
a shattering

but at the sound of that squawk!
it instantaneously leaps

and I can’t help remembering
how Grandma used to phone me,
saying
I just wanted to hear
your precious voice.

You cannot know, little Finch
on the other side of the glass,
how precious your voice is to me
or how I marvel
at your resiliency.

In the long continuum of things,
our stories are interwoven
as much as the grasses and tiny flowers
and random sweet feathers in all
your former nests.

If you dare to build again
here in my sanctuary
I will dare to love again.

If you do not, I will understand
that your new life will go on elsewhere
as I go on cherishing
every bright memory
and the sound.

The return

Renewal: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 18 Comments

This week I’m honored to host fellow Spiritual Journey writers who gather on the first Thursday of each month.

In choosing the theme of renewal, I note that one definition of the word is resuming an activity after an interruption. That’s exactly what I’m doing now: writing my first blog post in two months. My blogging life went on hiatus while a lot of other life happened. I spent the summer keeping granddaughters. I returned to work at school in a new role. And my husband, a pastor, slowly succumbed to debilitating back pain. Unable to stand for very long, he’s been preaching while seated in a chair. Surgery was inevitable. Having spent four days in the hospital at the end of October, he’s now home and slowly ‘resuming interrupted activities’ like sitting, standing, and walking, which are, at times, excruciating.

Considering my husband’s journey, I might have chosen the word endurance. He lost an eye to a rare condition in 2015. In 2019, he survived two heart attacks, cardiac arrest, and two subsequent surgeries. He was still convalescing when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Through it all, something he came to enjoy, and which helped him regain his physical strength, was hiking at a nearby dam. I’d return home from work and he’d tell me: “I saw an eagle at the dam today!”

I started accompanying him on weekends, armed with binoculars and my bird identification apps. We saw (and heard) a wondrous variety of birds, most notably the ospreys with babies in their nest, the great blue heron at the waterfall, and the gorgeous red-shouldered hawk that flew ahead of us in the woods to perch on a low branch, where it stared right back at us, with considerably less awe.

No eagles.

As time wore on, my husband’s back wore out, and there were no more hikes.

When the pain relegated him to preaching from a chair, he finally scheduled the surgery. It was more than he wanted to endure. He was tired of enduring.

Which brings me to the need for renewal.

Circle back with me, for a moment, to the eagles.

A few years ago I had a medical issue which required an outpatient procedure. My husband drove me to the hospital and back home afterward. It was winter; I watched the bare trees and old farm outbuildings whipping by my window when I saw… could it be? A bald eagle sitting, big as life, at the roadside! If I’d been on a bike I could have held out my hand and touched it (theoretically).

I was, however, still woozy from anesthesia…perhaps it was a figment…

But my husband cried out: “That was an eagle!“

He turned the car around.

The eagle might have ignored our passing again, but it grew suspicious when we slowed down. It unfurled its mighty wings and headed for a gnarled old oak.

Call it fanciful, if you like…sighting that eagle reassured me that all would be well with my medical situation.

So it was.

Four months later my husband’s heart stopped; he was resuscitated, with a shattered sternum; he survived emergency stents and bypasses.

He went walking at the dam as rehab. He saw eagles.

Although I’ve looked and looked, I haven’t seen one since that unique roadside appearance.

Until this last surgery.

Our oldest son offered to stay the first night with his dad in the hospital so I could come home and sleep. I was exhausted. I would stay the next night.

Early on the following morning, somewhat rested, I drove back to the hospital. October in the North Carolina Piedmont is breathtakingly beautiful. Along both sides of this particular highway the forest stretches out in a visual paean of orange, red, and yellow. That day, the blazing colors were framed by a brilliant blue, cloudless sky. Our son had texted that his dad had a rough night. We all knew to expect it it; the intensity of post-op pain for spinal surgery is severe. My husband has already been in tremendous pain for so long. He’s already suffered and endured so much…he knew he needed this surgery, but will he have the strength to endure the aftermath?

Will I?

Such were my dark thoughts that bright morning, inching my way back to him in the congested workday traffic, when a solitary bird glided into view in the tranquil blue above the gridlocked cars. A big, dark bird with long, broad wings, white head shining bright in the sun…

It can’t be, I thought. After all the times I’ve tried to see one…that it should be now…I leaned as far as I could toward the windshield, taking advantage of the stopped traffic to stare upward.

It came nearer, sailing with easy grace, low enough for me to see its gleaming white, fan-shaped tail.

No mistaking it.

Isaiah 40:31 came immediately to mind:

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Renewal. An infusion of new strength, sufficient for the day. An assurance of more for the difficult days ahead. These words were originally given by the prophet Isaiah to the Israelites, foretelling the end of their Babylonian captivity. The people would make the seven-hundred-mile journey back home; they would be restored. The chapter begins with Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. The phrase they shall walk seems especially significant in light of my husband’s situation, that he shall soon walk without the pain that’s plagued him. There’s more to say about the biblical symbolism of eagles, but in this verse, the original language seems to allude to feathers rather than wings and an ancient Jewish belief that when the eagle molts, his youth and vitality are restored.

My husband’s battered body will not be restored to youth in this life. Vitality, however, means strength and energy, which brings us to another definition of renewal: a return to vigor. A return of physical strength and good health. That is our prayer for his healing.

Most importantly, the verse speaks to strength renewed by waiting on, or depending on, or clinging to, the Lord. More than renewal of physical strength. It’s spiritual rehab.

That eagle, appearing on the morning after my husband’s surgery, buoyed my spirit. As did the other I saw by the road on the day I was concerned for my own health.

We continue to wait on, to cling to, the Lord as we travel this long road of recovery. Daily renewal of strength comes from nowhere else.

Let me close by saying I’m awed, anew, by His use of visual aids for the spiritual journey.

Harbingers

I. That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure

back country byway, winter-brown grass
trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past
small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground
bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—

I thought it was the anesthesia
until you saw it, too,
before it flew.

And I knew.

II. On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery

lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright
our son says you had a painful, painful night
dew on the windshield, fog in my brain
all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain
but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire
against cloudless blue where a solitary flier
glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…

I promise, beloved one.

Your healing
has begun.

Bald Eagle by Gary Rothstein, NASA. Public domain.

Dear Spiritual Journey Writers: Thank you for traveling alongside me!
Click here to add your post links.

Screenshot

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

Usually it’s the sound of cicadas that stirs my soul, their rattling courtship-chorus reaching a feverish crescendo in late August. Summer hits its brutal zenith just before it begins to die. Interesting how August means to increase.

On the last Sunday of August, it’s not the sound of cicadas which captivates me.

It’s the sight of one clinging to the screen in the kitchen window, early in the morning.

So still that I wonder if it’s dead.

I am tempted to go out and see, but I don’t. Let it be. If it’s dead, it will still be there after church and I’ll save its body to show the granddaughters. Cicadas are big insects that evoke terror in many people; I do not want the girls to fear them. The antidote to fear is understanding. Study. Fear not. Maybe even learn to love.

I take a photo instead.

It is a dark morning, like the one in the sermon text for this day, Mark 1:35: Jesus rises “very early in the morning, while it was still dark” to find a desolate place to pray. He’d spent the previous day healing the sick, including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and driving out demons.

When I return home, the cicada is gone.

Not dead.

All I have is this snapshot of it resting alone in a quiet place on the grid, with the crape myrtle by the old dog’s grave blooming in the background.

I could write an entire book, perhaps, on the symbolism and metaphor here.

I settle for a poem.

Clinging to the grid
In respite from work
Crape myrtle abloom
August’s crescendo is the last
Defying death in the wings
As love drives resurrection

The cicada and crape myrtle are symbols of life, longevity, immortality, and resurrection.
Summer is dying, but only for now.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge

Today I dance: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 11 Comments

with thanks to my Spiritual Journey writer-friends who gather on the first Thursday of each month, and to Chris Margocs for leading today with the theme of “Shall we dance?”

Today my heart dances. Even as I write these words, I am preparing to attend a chapel service in which my firstborn will be honored. He completed a Master of Divinity degree last December and the seminary faculty selects one graduate for the Pastoral Leadership award. My son was chosen.

Today, with the Spiritual Journey theme of Shall we dance, I recall Miriam, the sister of Moses. In Exodus 15:20-21 she led the women in a victory dance, echoing her brother’s song of praise to God for salvation from Pharaoh’s army in the miraculous parting of the Red Sea:

I will sing unto the Lord, for he has
triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider he has
thrown into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
(Exodus 15:1-2)

Today I think about the journey my husband and I have made. We’d been married less than two years when we rededicated our lives to God and my husband became a pastor. I was twenty-two; he was twenty-five. So much story to tell…all these years later, I stand in awe of the sustaining hand of God and His wondrous provision, grace, and mercy.

Our son named his firstborn daughter Micah, which means Who is like God? Answer: No one. And our little Micah, age eighteen months, loves nothing better than music and dancing. Except maybe food…

Today is a day of victory and praise for all that God has done, and continues to do, in the life of my family.

Today I dance…

I offer it in the form of a pantoum.

Dance, dance, dance!
Who is like God?
No one. No one.
He is beside you, behind you, before you.

Who is like God?
In the giving and forgiving
He is beside you, behind you, before you.
None of the sacrifices

in the giving and forgiving
of all your beloveds
—none of the sacrifices
can do for you what God has done.

Of all your beloveds
no one, no one
can do for you what God has done—
dance, dance, dance!

/

Blessing

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

noun

a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.

—Dictionary.com

*******

I could hardly wait to get home yesterday to check the progress of the new finch nest on my door wreath.

On Day Two, it now has the characteristic cup shape. It’s lined with white fuzz, a soft cushion for the precious eggs to come.

It is comprised almost exclusively of fresh green grass. The color of newness and life.

House finches are said to represent new beginnings.

Their nests always fill me with awe, and never more than now, watching the parents working together to rebuild immediately after two of their babies died in the previous nest, which I tore down. Confession: I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. Nature is mighty, ever-resilient, wise; it is imbued with regenerative power. Yet there are so many delicate balances within it. I didn’t want to upset any of these. I am a mere student of these birds. They are the experts.

So to see this nest being built in the exact spot as the ill-fated former one is a gift. It sends my spirits soaring, exponentially.

House finches are considered symbols of joy. If you ever hear one singing, you understand why.

In some parts of the world, they’re called the blessing bird.

They chose my door years ago as the place to bring new life into the world. I now share the wonder of it with my seven-year-old granddaughter, our “nurture scientist.” Together we have witnessed the miracle of tiny life coming into existence and eventually taking flight. In a couple more seasons, her baby sister will be able to enjoy it, too.

After I took this photo of the new nest, rejoicing and wondering when the first egg will appear, I went into the house to find a mysterious package my husband had retrieved from the mailbox.

Neither of us had ordered anything.

Curious.

I opened it…

A gift from a friend I met through writing, who reads about my finches each spring, who knows of the recent loss.

I am awed again.

A writing community is like a nest: a safe place especially created for growth, where we nurture one another and encourage each other to stretch our wings and fly.

It is here that we learn the true power of story and how it knits our hearts together. In the beginning, in the end, we are story.

To live it, write it, build it together, is a gift.

And the time for doing it is now. Today.

My love for the finches, like my love for writing, is inextricably woven through and through with gratitude for the blessings in my life. It’s all a song in my heart, greater than words.

Each day brings its own gifts. It’s up to us to see them, accept them, celebrate them.

And to give in return.

Beyond the horizon
Lies infinite possibility
Eyes cannot see.
Sky meeting sea
Sea meeting sky…
I fly ever onward
Nested and rested in the
Giver of every good and perfect gift.

Today, there might be an egg.

********
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge

and my dear gift-giver