faith

Spiritual Journey word walk

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

It’s the first Thursday in June, which means that our small band of Spiritual Journey writers is blogging, reading one another’s work, reflecting, and commenting. It is a calling to encourage one another as writers and humans in the unfolding story of life.

Today’s leader, Carol Varsalona, always buoys our spirits. Carol finds endless beauty all around, every day, even in the wake of losing her husband. She invites Spiritual Journey Participants to revisit the “One Little Word” we chose in January (if we chose one). Carol’s word is restore. You can read about her journey here.

In case you aren’t familiar: One Little Word (or OLW) is a way to see, process, and reflect on life for growth. It can be a tool for framing daily life and extracting deeper meaning, in lieu of New Year’s resolutions. I have found it helpful in bolstering my faith and my writing in the past, with words like simplify and reclamation. Then came 2021, the year I chose “awe.” I’ve written of this before: I didn’t feel like choosing a word that January. The world was still masked by COVID-19. Uncertainty, fear, isolation, and loss lingered. Everyone was grappling along, day by day. But I chose awe, or, to be more accurate, awe chose me. In short: It revealed itself and I reveled. I chose it again the following year, and, to this day, I keep myself open to it. Awe does not disappoint; in my experience every thread of it leads straight back to God.

I haven’t chosen an official “One Little Word” since.

Other words have come to find me, however, settling themselves into my mind like birds nesting in a tree. These words seem intent on staying; I welcome them, much as I welcome birdsong. Two of them arose last year during my rereading of the Bible with extensive study notes. The first is provision. From Genesis to Revelation, I am struck, or shall I say I am awed anew, by God’s infinite and intricate provision for everything in his creation. I could branch out in myriad directions, especially on the brokenness of creation due to human failure, or rebellion, but in the interest of time, I will only say that every branch is connected to my second word: Sovereignty.

I love the sound of it. Sovereignty. I love the faith it requires, the peace it imparts. No matter what happens, God is in control. Nothing supersedes him, his will, or his word. It’s a disconcerting thing to contemplate holy God’s sovereignty even over evil… again, nothing thwarts him, his will, or his word. His purposes will be accomplished. Sovereignty implies provision; the King takes care of his people. His power is absolute. He is the rightful and just authority; as Creator, all that exists belongs to him. He has the first word and the final say in all things. He keeps his promises. He loves. He provides our own capacity to love. He calls us to love him and to call upon him in times of trouble… which I did last January, driving to work in despair, near tears. I’d just begun my intense rereading of the Bible. The workplace and other life events were weighing heavy on me. Driving along the scenic country roads, I said aloud: Lord, I could use some encouragement now. I rounded a bend and there, high on an old naked tree, sat a bald eagle.

I wept.

Awe. Provision. Sovereignty. Signified by an eagle… and a puppy, for on that very day in January 2025, one was born. My husband, who knew I wanted a dog and who didn’t really want one himself, would search and find it as a gift for me. I was beyond stunned. Awed. I knew exactly from whence cometh my help. My husband brought the beautiful red-gold puppy home in March. I named him Jesse. Yes, after King David’s father, and also because the name means “The Lord exists.” Our Jess has a pedigree and while it wasn’t necessary to register him, I did so, to preserve the record of his birth date and to give him a commemorative name: he’s officially Jesse, of the Lord’s Sovereignty.

So when the Kentucky Derby rolled around two months later, as I marked my sixtieth birthday in the year of my fortieth wedding anniversary, a horse named Sovereignty was running.

As soon as I heard the name, I knew. I told my husband: “He’ll win.”

Of course he did. Sovereignty won the Belmont, too. I’ve no doubt that if he’d run in the Preakness, he’d have taken the Triple Crown.

Not that horse racing is generally considered spiritual, mind (except for fervent prayers to win, perhaps). It’s just that this name appeared at a time when I’d immersed myself in rereading the Bible all the way through, highlighter in hand, marking every study note mentioning the sovereignty of God, in a year of personal milestones while my fellow Americans began holding No Kings protests…

The King of Kings has infinite ways of reminding humanity of who he is.

To recap: While I didn’t choose OLW for 2025, sovereignty came to stay, like awe.

At Christmas came the word Amen. I wrote of this in a previous post, The Prayer. If I were stringing spiritual journey words like priceless pearls on a necklace, Amen would be right there alongside awe, sovereignty, and provision. How did Amen come to me? It’s on a necklace my son gave me for Christmas. One side of the pendant is in English, the other in Hebrew. The designer lives in Israel; she created the necklace as a means of clinging to peace and God’s promises while hearing bombs exploding. The word is more than a pronouncement at the end of a prayer. It signifies acceptance and….the sovereignty of God. I mentioned in my post that it can be translated as “truly” or “verily,” the latter of which is the origin of my mother’s name. It was time for me to accept her death after twenty-two years with no contact. It was also time to remember all that was good in our relationship before it became so broken.

And so I come to my final word on today’s walk. I write of it often. I play with it a lot in my mind, for, somehow, it seems a defining word for my entire life, like a frame for a memoir: Shards. I don’t know why I love this word. I just do. It has an ethereal sound, yet it implies pain. Shattering. Something once whole, now in sharp-edged fragments. The mightiest part of the metaphor for me is that shards of broken glass can still reflect light, color, and beauty. It’s perfect…isn’t my blog called Lit Bits and Pieces? Doesn’t life break us all? My mother used to say “I love you to pieces.” She did, until she went to pieces. I hold the shards to the light—ever so carefully—and see how God has worked from the beginning of my life to this very moment, despite me and my innumerable flaws. He IS the beauty in the brokenness.

What a journey it’s been. I walk onward, over the paving-stones where I find these words etched again and again: Awe. Provision. Sovereignty. The shards strewn amongst them glitter like diamonds.

Thank you, Lord, for all of it.

Amen.

Things old and new: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

The first Thursday of the month rolls around, meaning it’s time for my band of Spiritual Journey writers to gather and share. The theme for May, offered by Chris Margocs, is beginnings and endings. As Chris points out, May is always a major time of transition for those of us who are teachers; we are in the throes of wrapping up another school year.

The month also happens to hold some significant beginnings and endings for me.

I was born in May.

My grandfather died in May.

Chris referenced Isaiah 43:18-19 in her invitation: Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

What God is saying to his exiled people here, through the prophet Isaiah, is to not live in the past but to recognize his miraculous provision and his ongoing exodus-like deliverance. It is all about reliance on him for the journey… says one of my study notes: “Where there is no clear path forward, God creates one.”

It could summarize my life.

I often write of the past, of time spent with my grandparents. I do so from a place of profound gratitude. They were the joy of my childhood. They lived to be in their nineties and got to see me grown with children of my own. I know that God is faithful to those who love him, from one generation to the next (Deuteronomy 7:9; Psalm 119:90; Psalm 103:17). The legacy of faith is priceless to me. It has framed and defined my entire existence. It is all God’s doing. It is the greatest thing I have to pass down.

But today I will not write of the past.

Today I consider the “new thing” springing forth.

A different granddaughter, a different grandfather…a different path.

*******

One afternoon
while I am at work
our son stops by the house
to see his dad

He brings our granddaughter
who asks Grandpa
if she can watch Bluey
and can she have
a popsicle, please

Grandpa (as always) says
Yes
of course
my little angel

Perched on the couch
legs swinging
beneath the TV tray
mouth stained red and blue
she pulls out the popsicle
long enough to whisper
to Grandpa:

I want
to stay here
forever

He says
I know, honey
I want you to

Then she says

Grandpa—
I don’t want
to die

And he tells her

Honey, you don’t
have to worry
about that.
Jesus
will take care
of you

(the same thing
his mother told him
when he was twelve,
after his daddy died)

Despite thirty-eight years
in the ministry
officiating hundreds
of funerals

when he tells me
what our granddaughter said
he breaks
into uncontrolled sobs

She is only four

She does not know
how damaged
his heart is—

stented, patched,
burned, stitched
more than once
by medicine
and mercy

And although he often quips
about living on borrowed time
and being a member of
the Lazarus Club
I watch him pausing
to catch his breath

He does not mind
the going
whenever Jesus
should come for him

but he cannot bear
the thought
of hers

my little angel

What can I do
except hold them close

every chance I get
for as long
as I can

(thank you, Lord,
for every day
for every minute

and Your every
promise.

Amen.)

Spiritual journey: A word

/ Fran Haley / 12 Comments

I have reached a gray season.

Not in terms of this January morning, with its oyster sky and neutral-colored doves settling into the birdbath under the naked crape myrtle as I write. Not the frenzied darksilver squirrels darting about with their elegant question-mark tails. Nor the grass, which isn’t gray, just seemingly unable to decide if it wants to be brown or green, dead or alive.

Gray, but not the concrete driveway or my husband’s secondhand silver car…replacing the trusty car we had for almost fifteen years, totaled at summer’s end. A driver ran a stop sign at the crossroads nearby. My husband was driving our old car. He wasn’t injured. He is a survivor of so many things that it would take a book to tell it all.

Survival. A word worthy of contemplation. But it’s not the word I have in mind this morning, nor is the word gray, really. I am just describing what I see through my own window. The way things are in this moment. My now.

When I say I have reached a gray season, I mean an in-between point, like when the holidays and their glittering festivities are over (although my Christmas tree is still up; my husband likes the lights on these long winter evenings). A point when another year has gone and a new one is unfolding with who knows what hidden in its folds for us all. A taking-stock season. A reevaluation of priorities through the lens of what I am able—and not able—to do now. Not what I will do tomorrow, next week, this summer…or in the indeterminate days or years of life remaining to me, when youth is gone and aging gets to write the rest of the story.

People tell me I do not age. My body tells me otherwise. Minor aches and pains are the telltale signs of Time. I am incrementally slower than I used to be. More deliberate and careful. Not to mention presently shaking off mild bronchitis. I have a friend who stayed physically active and kept working hard because, in her words, “I refuse to get old.” But she did, she is, and dementia has taken control. So much for living nearly a century. I have lived well over half of one and feel the weight of it. Paradoxically, people ask when I plan to retire. Fun question. Most retirees I know are still working. Staying alive is expensive.

So I come to a plateau of asking: What is truly worth my time, my energy, my money? What is necessary? What is not? What is wise? A shedding-place, you might say. Born of a desire to get rid of material things I do not need as well as thoughts, perspectives, ideas, failures, vanities, even (shocking my own self with this) memories and losses that I am tired of carrying.

If I strip all this away (envisioning long strips of bark peeling off the crape myrtle as it grows), what do I find?

My spirit, ageless and weightless, eternally longing for God who breathed it in the first place. The Author of everything I ever truly loved in my whole life’s journey, the Giver of every good and perfect gift, miraculously drawing me along. God who sustained me to this point. God who will see me through the rest of the journey, ever how weary and unable I become. God whose sovereignty is absolute, even when I cannot see it or sense it.

As I write—not making this up, honest—the sun pierces the grayness outside my window.

Let me reveal the word I had in mind when I began this post.

Amen.

Technically it means so be it or truly. It is a word signifying acceptance.

It just so happens to be the word on a silver necklace one of my sons gave me for Christmas.

It comes at a time when day-to-day plans take a backseat to my husband’s ongoing health issues and my own limitations. A letting go, to keep on going. A not quite here-nor-there-time. A time of finding freedom within the very constraints of Time. I’ve even decided—again surprising myself—to let my gray hair grow out because I am tired of fighting the inevitable.

So, yes, literally a gray season, in so many ways.

My now. I am learning to embrace it.

Amen.

with thanks to Margaret Simon for kicking off the 2026 Spiritual Journey gatherings on the first Thursday of each month, and for this new logo, which I love. I am posting two days late, on Saturday, as it took me awhile to get to this. So be it (Amen).

Sparkles in the shards

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

If ever I were to write a spiritual journey memoir, I might begin with this, one of my earliest memories…

She tells me to sit here on the braided rug. She places a wheel of colors on the floor in front of the silver tree, decorated with red and blue glass ornaments.

Watch, she says. Watch. She plugs in the color wheel’s cord and switches off the overhead light.

We are plunged into darkness. I shiver. There’s a small click and suddenly the room is ablaze with amber light. The tree before me is no longer silver but gold, glittering as if lit with thousands of tiny candles. The color wheel hums. Gold gives way to green, red, blue. The tree deepens to shimmering emerald, glows like redhot fireplace embers, descends into sapphire glimmers bluer than flames of the gas stove burners.

Everything is transformed by the light. The ornaments on the tree go dark, throwing sparks in the colors that touch them. Over by Granddaddy’s black recliner, the ashtray on its thin pole makes a long, flickering shadow. Its curved brass handle, a little leaping ram, gleams like pure gold. The moving colors make the ram seem a living thing. The knotty pine walls watch it all with a hundred unblinking eyes. The polished wood organ, with legs curved like a deer’s, reflects the whole scene…and nothing is as radiant as my grandmother’s smiling face, bending down to mine…

I can’t remember what she said, exactly, but her expression was one of joy. I would see it many times over in my life, most often connected with stories of my birth or upon seeing spotted fawns by the roadside or when receiving a gift from someone in the family. And always with snow and Christmas. She came into the world the day after Christmas of 1915 and left it the day before Christmas Eve, 2006. She never lost her childlike joy of the season.

This memory of her aluminum Christmas tree and color wheel is from the late 1960s, when my grandparents lived in an apartment near mine. Probably the Christmas I was three.

I did not know about separations then. Or loss. I did not know all that my grandmother had already suffered in her life, from deprivation to death. Neither of us could know the shatterings that lay ahead of us.

But in these shards of memory I see great love reflected. Something pure and bright despite the brokenness. My grandmother believed in Jesus and heaven. She tried to live it. She prayed, and even when her prayers seemed unanswered, even when she grappled with not understanding, her faith held fast. Try as it might, darkness could not overcome her bright spirit. It could not extinguish the flame of her inner joy. She sang hymns. She spoke of angels. She never would have thought of herself as a warrior angel, but she served as mine as long as she lived. She loved me fiercely.

God loves us fiercely. That is the story of Christmas. That is the song of the stars. That is the light I find reflecting in the sharpest shards of life. It is the holiness that remains in the unholy fragments. We catch glimmers of it. We desire this light, but then we want to bend it. We would color it our own way and to our own purposes. That’s the story of humankind. We want to be our own authority, not to submit, and then to play victim. Our vision of truth and justice is skewed. We want to judge without being judged. We don’t want to love everybody; we nurture our hatred of one another. We fail to see our self-worship and idolatry (except for when we deliberately choose it). We fall farther and farther away. We have lost direction and think we can find it on our own, despite the darkness of our hearts.

Yet…

I loved you at your darkest is my favorite paraphrase of Romans 5:8.

Thoughout life, iridescent sparks are sent to guide us beyond the brokenness. Like my grandmother and countless others who are imperfect but real conduits of God’s love, ever drawing us back to the awe and worship we were meant for.

Therein lies the real spiritual journey.

******

with thanks to my fellow Spiritual Journey Thursday witers and Jone Rush MacCulloch for hosting us in December.

Light and joy to you all on your journey.

Barefoot: a spiritual journey

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

In my favorite photo of her, she is barefoot.

Smiling from ear to ear, wearing her handmade “wedding dress.”

She is three years old.

She came into our lives like a little angel of light in dark times descending.

My oldest son, like the prodigal, had returned home to find new direction for his life. He enrolled in seminary but resisted the call to preach. He met a young woman seeking the Lord’s guidance in rebuilding her own life…and her little girl’s.

Said my son to me, one starkly memorable morning: “I have been seeing someone.”

“Wonderful!” I replied. Noting his expression: “She must be special.”

“She is. I have something to tell you…”

Long pause. Entire lifetimes hang in the balance of such.

I braced myself.

“She has a little girl.”

I breathed. Didn’t even know I was holding my breath.

Things happen in everybody’s life. The whole of our stories is the overcoming.

I asked only one question: “Is this what you want?”

He nodded. A moment too great for words.

Finally he managed: “You always wanted a little girl.”

Lifelong desire of my heart, now granted.

In the ensuing months we nearly lost his father. My husband battled his way back from heart attacks, cardiac arrests, surgeries. A gray day-to-day existence, clinging to the Lord and the wisdom of the medical team…to this day, medical professionals read his reports and look at him with awe, the unspoken message in their eyes: How are you still here?

My husband survived to officiate our son’s wedding, for which the little “wedding dress” was made. Our girl stood by her Mama and new stepfather during the ceremony. Our boy made vows to them both: to be a loving husband and father, forever.

He also became a pastor. Like his dad.

The COVID pandemic came and went. A new little granddaughter was born. My husband suffered additional health setbacks. Every time he overcame to continue his life and his ministry. When despair threatened me, I wrote my way through it. When I was too weary to pray, I rested in the knowledge that the Spirit prayed on my behalf. When I felt alone, too weighted to move, and that I could go no further, a voiceless voice stirred my heart: You have little girls. You affect their now and their future.

It always, always pulled me through.

I think a lot about loss. How we humans fear it more than anything. How it feels like the end of the story.

It is not.

It is out of loss, out of human frailty and failings, that God does his mightiest work…we will not know all the answers in this life, but he is a seekable and findable God, if we are earnest. He is present with us; we must trust. At any given time we can see only the littlest fraction of his great picture, unless he allows us to see a bit more…

Back to my barefoot girl.

More than anything, we fear losing those we love. From the start she wrapped herself in and around my son’s heart…he so wanted to adopt her. He belonged to her and she to him, but not legally.

Until recently.

This summer our family celebrated the official adoption of our beautiful barefoot girl, now growing tall. On that day at the courthouse, she was a radiant as she was when she was three and so excited about the wedding.

I could quote Scriptures about being adopted children of God, about love triumphing over all and never ending, about the Lord telling his prophets to stand barefoot on holy ground. The verses swirl together in my mind.

What I know is that faith and love are holy ground, exemplified in face of my precious barefoot girl. The spiritual journey is lived moment by moment, knowing the sovereign Lord can bring—so often brings— holiness out of unholiness. Wholeness out of brokenness. That is the whole message of Christ and salvation; it is something we cannot do for ourselves. He is the God of redemption and restoration beyond our greatest imaginings.

My heart has learned to sing with the psalmist: Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!

He will deliver.

So gloriously.

Ready for the wedding day

Adoption day, at last

*******

with special thanks to my fellow Spiritual Journey band of writers, and to Linda Mitchell for choosing the theme of “barefoot.” Linda: I’d been wanting to commemorate my granddaughter’s adoption. “Barefoot” gave me the perfect beginning place.

Spiritual Journey: Lament

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

For Spiritual Journey Thursday (the first Thursday of each month), a fellow writer offers a topic for our group to reflect on individually. Then we write and share.

Today Ruth Hersey offers this: The topic I chose today, given that we’re in the second half of Lent, is Lament. The world has plenty to lament right now, and I suggest writing a Psalm of Lament…Aaron Niequist say[s] that a third of the Psalms in the Bible are about lament, whereas zero percent of modern worship songs are. 

I’m not sure I’ve ever written a lament.

Biblically speaking, they follow a general pattern:

  1. An address to God
  2. A complaint
  3. A request for help
  4. Expressing trust in God

And so I started with the following. I almost deleted it, but am choosing to leave it as a record of my thinking and my heart:

Oh Lord, my God
Creator of all
you have always been there

before the beginning
and never-ending

you have aways been there

in my joy
in my pain
in my sorrow
in my rage

you were there

before I knew You
when I forgot You
when I ran from you

and when I ran to you

you were there…

I know these things to be true; however, I am losing the point of a lament, which is to be an expression of deep sorrow or grief, yet not without hope, and not without seeking the Lord and ultimately trusting. I think I struggle with laments because their anguished cries to God can sound somewhat accusatory. That is not the tone I want. It feels like misplaced blame.

And so I turned to Psalm 13. It is the model for my second lament attempt, here…

How long, Lord, will I forget that You are here in the midst?
    How long will I try to carry my burdens alone?
How long will I grieve the ways of the world
     with human judgment clouding my heart?
 How long will my own flawed perspective blind me?

Look on me with mercy, oh Lord my God.
    Give me Your light, that I might see
Your ways, Your workings, unaffected by humanity
    which makes of itself an enemy.

Only in You do I wholly trust
    for only holy You never fail.
Grant me wisdom, strength, and grace all my days
    to live each one remembering and honoring You.

…it is still a work in progress, as are we all, thanks be to God, whose mercies endure forever.

Psalm 139 is my favorite of the psalms; I close here with its final verses as part of my daily prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Whole

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

On the first Thursday of each month, a group of us gather online to write to a theme. We call this Spiritual Journey Thursday.

I’ve been out of the loop awhile. Today I take up the invitation again. Denise Krebs is hosting, and she has offered us the topic of wholeness:

What does it mean to be whole, on our spiritual journey?

I feel like my reponse could take a whole book.

Maybe that’s because I understand brokenness.

Last Sunday I wrote a letter to my mother after learning of her death (the post Strewn with loss). We were estranged for almost twenty-three years. It’s a story of mental illness, compulsions, a family paying a price, and no reconcilation. The truth is that after such a shattering we can’t wish wholeness into being; we can only find something of beauty in the pieces. We must learn to treasure that. To be grateful for it. The letter to my mother is to thank her for the beautiful shards amidst the brokenness. There are many. She loved me, once. I loved her. I forgave her. She never knew. She is gone. I could not fix her or the relationship. I had to learn to be whole without her.

The truth is that we are all broken in some way, and sometimes, wholeness doesn’t look or feel like being whole. It’s not perfection. It’s not even peace. It’s more like a path.

If we choose to take it.

To me wholeness being productive, fulfilled, and able to love. Three things I rely on to get me there: Faith, nature, writing.

I’ll take them one at a time:

Faith. I believe God is sovereign. God is at work even when we cannot see it or feel it, and when we can’t seem to make any sense at all of what we are living through. He often does his best work through the least likely people and in impossible situations (for nothing is impossible with God, Luke 1:37). In my current rereading of the Bible, what stands out to me, over and over again, is God’s provision to those who love and obey him. If I am to be honest about my own spiritual journey…I fail at this miserably. But that is the point. I am broken like everything else in this world. The desire for relief from pain or a racing pulse or an anguished heart or a reeling mind is the very desire that pulls me toward God. I do not have to understand ungodly things. I have only to seek God’s help in rising above them all. He will make a way. He will provide. This requires that I know more about him and so I study. Again…wholeness is a path.

Nature. I won’t go into my many bird stories here. I will just say that having a sense of awe, as in understanding that you are part of something greater than yourself, brings purpose and wholeness. It also brings wisdom; King Solomon “spoke of beasts and of birds, and of reptiles and of fish” (1 Kings 4:33). Says my study Bible: “Careful observation of the natural world and how it works it one of the ‘normal’ ways in which people gain wisdom… Solomon was concerned with the natural world.” Nature opens your mind and your heart. It imparts awe in abundance. Trees can communicate with each other. They try to help each other. When grass is cut, it immediately begins to heal itself; that’s the fragrance you smell. That very same chemical is also warning other grass that danger is near. The networkings of mushrooms is mind-blowing. It’s called “The Wood Wide Web.” Not long ago, a first grader told me earthworms are so important that none of us would be here without them (!). Nature offers healing. If you haven’t read Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson…give it a try. He is frank about his battles with depression and how nature helped pull him out of the abyss and into a better place.

He writes:

Kindness won’t make you rich, but it will make you whole. I know there is hurt in your life…These pains stick to us like burrs. They tell us to lash out, to stop feeling, to turn away and turn inward… But these impulses do not control us. They don’t write our stories, and each time you hear them and answer, “No, not today,” you have given a gift to the world…The world will give back to you in kind, but receiving those gifts can take a little practice… Nature is out there and she is in you. Meet her halfway.

I do this, every day. I meet nature. I look for birds. And more. Here’s the thing: Start looking, and they will come.

So might the feathers of wholeness that grow into wings.

Writing. I haven’t done as much writing this past year as in previous ones. I could say life gets in the way. That I don’t have a lot left to give at the end of the workday. That I am busy with my family, from my husband’s health issues to savoring any time I can get with my granddaughters…these things are true, but they’re not all. The “whole” truth is that I am tired. So, when the March Slice of Life Challenge rolled around again, I decided I would not take it on. Despite having loved it in the past, the idea of writing for thirty-one straight days and responding to others tired me even more. And then I woke up in the wee hours of March 1st and thought, why not write, you will feel deprived if you don’t. And so I got up and wrote. The following day, I wrote that letter to my mother…something I realized I really needed to do even though she will never know about it. That doesn’t matter; she’s free of her suffering in this world. And once again I realized the power of writing. Since I took on the daily challenge, I haven’t been as tired, strangely. I’ve felt stronger. More able. More clear-minded.

More whole.

Most of that is due to you, my friends. Coming back to my writing communities is like coming home to a place of profound belonging.

What is wholeness? Being productive, fulfilled, and able to love. How to attain it? Through faith, nature, writing…

Thank you, my fellow travelers, for being such a vital part of my journey.

And my wholeness.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the March Slice of Life Story Challenge
and to the SJT writers
and to my friend Denise, for her invitation to “wholeness”


The Heroes’ Hangout

/ Fran Haley / 27 Comments

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

That’s today’s WordPress prompt.

It’s beguiling, like the sword in the stone: Dare I grasp that jewel-encrusted hilt? Even if the sword should slide free of the rock (wonder of wonders!) will I have the strength to heft its ponderous weight, to actually use it? And to what purpose?

Here is what I believe: With every challenge comes opportunity; you cannot know the outcome until you seize it (ever how cold, heavy, terrifying the opportunity may be).

And so I put my hand to the hilt here with bits of a destiny story:

When I was a child, reading and writing were practically my life’s blood. Invaluable gifts for life’s journey. When the path took terrible turns through the darkest regions, strewn with loss…I could always read and write and pray my way through. Some encouraging soul, some sage, would also appear at every critical juncture to help guide me along, before I lost my way entirely.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be a pastor’s wife (nor, most certainly, did many of my young acquaintances and their parents). But here we are, my husband and I, thirty-eight years in the ministry, standing on the the cusp of our fortieth wedding anniversary, with two grown sons and two granddaughters who are the joy of our days.

I never expected to be a teacher. I quit college at twenty and didn’t go back to finish until after my youngest started school. The way was circuitous, full of obstacles…impossibilities…even loneliness and more than a little despair…until the sword called Opportunity appeared, glittering there in the gray stone of Challenge. I put my hand to it, finally graduating from college with a teaching degree when my oldest was taking his first semester college exams. Today I work with students in the very things I loved best as a child: reading and writing.

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

I see the hand of God at work in all of it…that doesn’t discount destiny, now does it?

In this, my seventeenth year of teaching (a latecomer, oh yes, but it doesn’t matter, the story begins anew every day), another opportunity presented itself: Setting up a program and a space for volunteers to come and read books to students. The challenge: Where? Every space in the building was in use, except for a recessed area at the top of the stairs, where black-draped tables once housed student “artifacts”… with a little time, imagination, and the generosity of our PTA, this has become our Heroes’ Hangout:

In this space, children fall in love with books and stories. They laugh. They learn. They experience. They ask questions. They observe. They imagine. They are at the beginning of their own hero-stories.

For, after all, are not the ideas of fate, destiny, and hero inextricably intertwined?

I have had the opportunity to guide students with writing in this space. Here’s a cento poem (cento meaning “patchwork”) composed of completely borrowed lines, my favorites from poems my second-grade heroes have written:

I worry about me and heights
I cry over the iPad because Mom said no
I understand my dreams tease me
I see a fairy in the forest
I say mermaids are real
I wonder why people think Ohio is strange
I dream of going to Ohio
I try to be kind
I worry about animals dying
I hope all the endangered animals survive
I wonder if Dodo birds are still alive
I see a baby goat getting milk from its mother
I hope people never litter again
I understand that palm trees are not trees
I want ice cream for life
I try to be a better sister
I pretend I am brave and smart
I think Heroes’ Hangout is the best
I pretend I am the fastest thing alive
I worry I am going to lose my gravity
I touch Dog Man’s hat and it feels like victory
I hear my future.

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

You tell me.

I can just tell you that if you are looking for heroes…you will find children.

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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge. This is my ninth year participating alongside fellow teacher-writers, as a means of continually honing the craft.

Confession: For the first time in nine years, I’d decided to not take up the Challenge.
Writing every day doesn’t seem sustainable right now. And maybe it isn’t.

But this morning, without any kind of plan, I got up and did it anyway.
Opporunity is here. WordPress provided a prompt. I reached. I pulled.

Your hand is on the hilt, my friends. You can do this!

Three song

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

for my granddaughter

When I tell you your story
in all the years to come
you will remember
bits and pieces
on your own

because Three
records memory

I will tell you of these days
my own autumn
in which you paint
infinite points of opal-fire
against charcoal-ash sky

because Three
is alchemy

I will tell you how my heart sings
at sight of you running
as hard as you can
your little arms held out
to me, to me

because Three
is utter glee

And I will tell you how I listen
as still as I can be
when you sing snippets
of hymns…
oh, always, always abide with me

beautiful Three
ever holy

love you forever, Micahroni – Franna

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with thanks to Linda Mitchell for hosting Spiritual Journey Thursday writers with this invitation: “As we enter Native American Heritage Month I ask that you respond to Joy Harjo’s Fall Song in any way that makes your heart happy.”

Our two granddaughters make my heart and Grandpa’s as happy, and as awed, as they have ever been. We pray thanksgiving every day.

Litany

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

Did you cry, people asked me.

I didn’t.

I am not sure it will make sense: I rested.

In the deep, wordless way of culmination.

My boy walked me down the aisle and seated me at the second pew, in the same spot where I sit each Sunday while his father preaches. In the same spot where I sat while I was expecting him and felt him stop moving whenever the piano was played, where I knew he was listening to the music before he was ever born. In the same spot where I sat with him in my arms for the first time during worship, when he was four days old.

I rested in the remembering.

I rested in the preparations being complete, and the long-awaited moment at hand.

I rested in the expression on my boy’s face, making his vows to his bride. I have never seen a groom with so tender a countenance. I marveled, and rested.

I rested, and rejoiced, that his father lived to officiate after suffering such serious health setbacks in recent years.

His father began to cry during the ceremony.

I rested in that love. In the overcoming. In the triumph.

I rested in the presence of my husband’s sister, that she traveled to be here, that she reminded my boy of his grandmother who loved him so. Ma-Ma is here, you know, she told my boy just before the wedding. She cried, too, over how much he looks like her mother.

I rested in the knowledge that my sister-in-law remembers her mother every time she sees a cardinal, her mother’s favorite bird. A symbolic bird, representing Christ. I remembered that my sister-in-law and my boy were holding Ma-Ma’s hands when she died. I rested in the serendipity of my boy’s bride choosing her wedding gown before she knew it was named “The Cardinal.” It happens to be her own grandmother’s favorite bird.

I rested in the significance of my boy’s precious bride wearing her grandmother’s pearls and my earrings, the third bride in the family to do so, after my first daughter-in-law and my youngest niece, who came with her new baby to see her cousin married. I recalled buying those earring for my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

I rested in that.

I rested in the timing, in late September marking the births of my grandfather and my husband as well as the loss of my father, and that it now marks new joy.

I rested in the day, in the glorious cusp-of-autumn sunshine, in this season of scuppernongs and piercing calls of red-shouldered hawks. I rested in the symbolism of wildflowers that my new daughter-in-law loves so well; although delicate and fragile, they are incredibly adaptable and resilient. They represent delight of the soul. She carried wildflowers; they were the pattern of my boy’s tie. Her dress and their wedding rings also bear vines—a symbol of deep spiritual significance.

I rested in the Scripture my husband read, from the second chapter of the Song of Solomon, the first time he’s ever used it in a wedding:

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

I rest in the fact that my boy and his bride reside just four minutes away from me.

And I rest in the vows that they wrote and spoke to each other, and in the invisible thread that pulled them together, drawn by the hand of God.

Yes.

I rest in the litany of it all.

My boy and me in front of the church after the ceremony.
Behind us is the parsonage where we lived when he was born.

Photos by Kailey B. Photograhy

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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the wonderful sharing-place
known as the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge