spiritual strength

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)

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!
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Focus

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

I am always looking for them.

Hawks.

I see them most often on power lines, easy to spot, as they are so much larger than other birds perched on high.

Alone. What other bird would perch with a hawk?

Some of them have so much white plumage that I think of snowy owls (which do not live in this southern clime).

In recent weeks I’ve seen a hawk in the branches of a winter-bare tree.

Regal. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Raptors, living on prey. Solitary creatures, not socialites. Steeped in symbolism.

Ultimately they are creatures of intense focus, and that is the lens I will use now.

It occurs to me, while contemplating hawks, that what we focus on feeds us.

Not our stomachs. Our spirits. Our souls.

Everything we devour isn’t good.

It also comes out that way, somewhere, somehow.

Somewhere, somehow, I think it was the hawk that inspired me to give up negativity for Lent.

I don’t need to partake of it or serve it (the whole point being repentance and not returning to it again).

I stepped away from social media quite some time ago; not gone, exactly, just…distanced. Able to hone in, occasionally, for what’s really of value.

I’ve stopped dwelling in the shadows of this school year (a work in progress). Perhaps more hours of daylight have helped with this…the hawk doesn’t waste precious time rueing the daily grind of life. It just does it. Concentrating on the task at hand. Never losing direction. Knowing when and where to move; until then, waiting and watching. With wide perspective.

Of course all the challenges don’t just disappear (as the hawk surely knows).

But in shedding unnecessary weights, the heights are easier to obtain. The mental eye is clearer, sharper.

Yes, focus.

Consider this, from Merriam-Webster:

The Latin word focus meant “hearth, fireplace.” In the scientific Latin of the 17th century, the word is used to refer to the point at which rays of light refracted by a lens converge. Because rays of sunlight when directed by a magnifying glass can produce enough heat to ignite paper, a word meaning “fireplace” is quite appropriate as a metaphor to describe their convergence point. From this sense of focus have arisen extended senses such as “center of activity.”

Directed light, channeled energy…being a conduit.

My thoughts spin homeward, to the hearth and heart of my life.

And as I drive at the end of the day, my freer spirit soars like the hawk on high, wind ruffling the embers of its breast.

Red-shouldered hawk. Photo by my friend E. Johnson

*******

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

Like crows, hawks use tools
to get what they need.

Writing is a tool
for the soul.

A lens
for a better focus
on life.

Stillness

/ Fran Haley / 10 Comments

I find there is nothing that drives away dark thoughts as much as Sunday morning, especially when it follows a night of strange and troubled dreams after a week of increasing tensions at work in a school year that seems never-ending. As I wake, pondering the attrition of humanity in general with a hymn-line playing in my head, Change and decay in all around I see, unable to tell if I am feeling heartsick, soul-sick, or just plain sick, the Sunday stillness settles my spirit. My stomach, on the other hand, needs more time…not sure if I will make it to church or not. A riotous melody from the front porch works like a tonic: a finch fantasia. The mohawk-headed babies that hatched in my door wreath should have flown on by now. I am glad they linger. I need these bright notes. I wish I could interpret them and know exactly what the finches are saying to one another… if they were not here, the silence would be so loud. There is a time for silence and it is not now. It is not the same as stillness. Sunday brings stillness, the finch song brings stillness, the wall clock with whirring crystals brings stillness. I am craving prolonged stillness, I am so tired, but I make myself go.

And if I had not done so, I would have missed it.

Backing out of the garage, closing the door, turning down the driveway… there.

Across the street, lying on the grass in front of a tangled green thicket, a large white cat, so still it seemed an alabaster statue. It didn’t move as I approached. It gazed at me as if it belonged in that very spot (I have never seen it before).

Sphinx-like. Pristine. Regal. Otherworldly. Breathtaking. I think I whispered the word Amazing.

I could have stayed and stared, I think, forever.

But, without movement of any kind, the white cat reminded me that stillness isn’t an untroubling; it is, instead, a submerging, away from surface-level fear, a shaking off, a resting place, a deep abiding.

Which paradoxically involves moving on.

I feel certain it winked at me as I did so.

Curiosity drove me to look it up: Pure white cats are rare, 5% or less of the population.
It didn’t seem to mind my taking its picture.

*******

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

Sunday is a stillness

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

Sunday is a stillness
in my week
not restful
for a pastor’s family
but restorative
and right
the church standing tall
like a father
doors like open arms
welcoming the penitent child
wrapping me
in belonging

Sunday is a stillness
in my spirit
ever how fierce or frayed
ever how dismayed
like a calming infusion
like a healing balm
the stillness seeps
so deep, so deep
for in all the unholiness
the holy remains

Sunday is a stillness
in my life
for the living
for the forgiving
for the remembering
for the mattering
for my walking in the footsteps
of those who walked before me
in the rhythms of grace
singing old songs of belief
through all our yesterdays
until our eternal Sunday
comes at last.