Category: Dreaming in Delaware

Advent. The candles and wreath are still packed in some unmarked box in the attic along with my liturgical motivation. I do appreciate the whimsy of the proposal to use 3 potatoes and 1 turnip with paper flames attached for households without 4 candles handy.

I even envy those who’ve skipped ahead to Christmas via Facebook, but I’m even less inclined to wrap anything around a tree right now. It’s not a lack of thanksgiving; perhaps it’s a shortage of hope or maybe vitamin D.

What did I hope for in November? A miraculous reunion of divided states of mind and heart? Perhaps. Having a Civil War scholar in residence kept the lid on that.  What about a miracle cure for what plagues us; a daring rescue by masked men and women of those foolish who refuse the common good and common sense?

Maybe it’s simply that I can’t figure out how to recognize hope these days. Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (NRSV) There’s my problem: a lack of conviction.

I’m interrupted in my writing by a question from William Wesley: “Do you believe that history is providential?” He tries on several answers as I ruminate. The sound of the trash truck interrupts as I rush to make sure the recycles are out. That done, I return to the task of the question of conviction. He’s reflecting on the Westminster Abby’s wall of modern saints. I’m not sure he noticed my absence, but he’s summoned Hebrews 12:1 into sight. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…”

So great a cloud…now the fire station alarm goes off. We’re two blocks away, so it’s an undertone to our days and nights. I’m grateful that Hannah Arendt isn’t inclined to howl at the sound.  This alarm isn’t alarming to the humans in this house because, first, it’s not sounding for us, and importantly, there’s trouble but somebody’s coming to some body’s rescue.

The fire departments here are all volunteer; even in Wilmington. President-elect Biden has the Secret Service now, but Delawarians have well-trained citizens, volunteers who come when called.  The sound convicts me; this is what I need: the assurance of things hoped for, a faith under restoration in this nation. When there’s a need, someone shows up. Will it work out? God knows, but it’s providence in action.

I climb the attic stairs and open a box labeled “Fragile. Christmas.” At the top of the box, there’s a handmade sign, a Christmas gift from my sister, Brucilla Campbell, made when her times were hard and lean. Two purple angels frame these words: “Without hope, the soul would have no rainbows, and the eyes no tears.”

Sometimes, even in Advent, there is “evidence of things not seen.” KJV

Meleagris. It’s the gobble genus; gobble being the native language of America’s fine feathered friend, the turkey. It’s not clear if there will be an official Presidential pardon this year, but the social media is stuffed with recipes for turkey alternatives. Good luck hunting a bird under 10 pounds in the grocery aisles.

I’ve always sided with Ben Franklin’s spirited defense of turkey written in a letter to his daughter in 1784.  The turkey is “a true original native of America” and “a bird of courage that would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”

I can vouch for that. The back road from the Cokesbury parsonage led to a T with stop signs. My car had paint chips missing above the bumper due to the wild turkey that would launch an attack as soon as I slowed to a stop. It was as if I’d invaded his stomping grounds.

There are turkey tracks across my landscape. Turkey is the centerpiece of my family thanksgiving. A bird big enough to fill the plates of family, neighbors, and often strangers. The wish bone is a prize, and the wish making and bone breaking a sibling ritual.

Our living room in the desert north of Tucson is the place of origin of a church, now St. Marks UMC,  but between its hatching and its final settling in, the community roosted in a turkey shed.  The Meleagris were replaced with Methodists for a season. I remember wondering if we’d ever outgrow the teasing of being “turkeys”. The Holy Spirit occasionally appears in my dreams as a feathered being that’s not a dove.

Manifest destiny isn’t a healthy theology for either native peoples or native birds. I try my hand at role reversal in a children’s play I write at Rough Rock on the Navajo Reservation. I remember their delight when Turkey Lurkey corrals the cowboys and banishes the BIA. Not great literature, but very good medicine.

This Covid season of caution has affected my relationship of Lions and Turkeys. I did not help pack Thanksgiving boxes; I just donated food. We quarantine because I want Bill and Daniel and Jess at our family table next year. I didn’t watch kids carry groceries into their neighbors, full of pride. But turkey was on the menu, cooked by Bellevue volunteers and food boxes were still faithfully packed to overflowing, then carried to cars along with Thanksgiving cards made by children.

I look at the thanks giving that rests on my kitchen table: sliced turkey, organic potatoes, broccoli, celery, and bananas, all from local farmers. If talking turkey means telling the truth and the whole truth, so help us, God, Franklin was right. We can survive if we serve others. We can thrive if we trust and share. Courage is what America needs now.

We’re spoon fed at the start and at the finish, if justice and mercy have any say in the way the world turns.  Human life requires feeding in its beginning and to its end.  Somebody has to feed us or we wouldn’t be here. To be spoon fed should be celebrated but it’s a sign of vulnerability. It means we’re either too young or too infirm to feed ourselves, and yet a spoon is a revelation of a holy human relationship. To stretch out a spoon is to extend a table of hospitality in God’s name, and in my household of faith, for Christ’s sake.  Good spoon work requires remembering how we’ve been fed and blessing the hands that have fed us by feeding others. Memorial and thanksgiving form the centerpiece in this table of sacramental life. We need help, however, in our table manners.  We need daily reminders of how to say grace.

We also need lessons on how to bless, not bite the hand that feeds us.  My best teacher of table manners was my mother’s mother, Flora.  At the age of 106, she’d moved from feeding to being fed.  She’s been the daily bread source of our young lives. She cooked plain, not fancy, until her late 80s. She moved from the stove to setting the table in her 90s.

I’ve framed her final lesson. My older sister’s kitchen is filled with the noisy sounds and smells of a 3-generation thanksgiving dinner.  My oldest sister, Sandy Lee Mace, inherited our grandma’s care and cooking DNA. Brucilla Campbell, my younger sister adds the global and gourmet sense to dining. Wilson Cloudchamber, youngest of the Murray girls, is a true believer in organic life.

I’m missing all of the above, so I do as I’m told:  feed Grandma. Turkey is now beyond Grandma’s ability or interest.  Long after other tastes have departed, the sense of bitter and sweet remains, so she’s having desert.  I spoon feed her ice cream, my attention elsewhere, until she stops the spoon. She traces the spoon to my fingers, then kisses my hand. She then returns to the ice cream.

A gesture of gratitude. To kiss the hand that feeds you. To feed others as you have been fed-with a grateful heart. This is what Thanksgiving means. This is Eucharist. We are spoon fed, start to finish.

Stirring Women

We are stirred by a sense

   as common as spoons.

   Amen.

We are capable

   of cupping God.

   So be it.

We believe in the destiny of dining.

We ladle grace like gravy

   over the bread of life.

In a hard-to-handle time

   we are good at getting to the bottom,

   gripped in Necessity’s hand.

We invent perpetual motion

   from a rounded shape

   and a hungry sound.

Few if any

    are born to the taste of silver.

Most acquire stainless steel.

We inspect tear spots.

   and expect tarnish.  

We polish tea spoons

   and offer sympathy

   with just a trace of acid.

Let others sharpen their wits,

pare away distinctions,

separate the jointedness of time.

We are spoon fed, start to finish.

Stir, lift, and blend mercy

   served warm.

Let us be good and godly as spoons.

   Amen.[i]

[i] Heather Murray Elkins © 1987, revised 2005. Worshiping Women (Abingdon), 1995. All rights reserved.

Our back deck is now bedecked with a tomato plant that’s over 12 feet high. As a very novice gardener, I’d prepared for the three small plants I’d purchased with a reasonable support system. Two of them behaved nicely, reaching a modest height, producing medium sized fruit. One reached the end of its lattice and threw a green tendril skyward, latching onto a passing bee or sparrow, then letting go to land deckside up.

I pinched back the pert yellow blossoms, as advised, but they seem to have resurrected themselves by morning. Perhaps that explains the name, “Nightshade”. I now count 7 new little tomatoes arranging themselves in the leaves and I worry about the odds of frost.

Jack’s Magic Beans come to mind. Perhaps I should collect the seeds and store them in a safe place. Such extravagance, the green generative force of a single Solanum lycopersicum.

But generative power is not limited to the ability to reproduce. There’s another kind of creativity I had the privilege to witness; a procreativity I was invited to participate in.

It started with a tomato plant, a very tall plant on a porch. We’d just moved in next door, starting married life and two graduate degree program at Duke. We’d not met our neighbor, but I noticed that the plant was too tall for its pot. It kept falling over. I didn’t know it was a tomato plant; there weren’t any tomatoes, but I keep picking it up when it takes a header. It’s the only plant on the porch, and so it must matter to our unknown neighbor.

On the fourth rescue, the neighbor arrives, a tall woman, with an extraordinarily warm voice and wide smile. She introduces herself and the plant. Her name is Helen and the plant is Sarah. I knew we were in the Bible belt when she explains that Sarah is apparently barren, but there’s always hope.

I’m cheered up by the prospect of a down to earth neighbor with a sense of humor. I rattle on about the drama/trauma of being an Appalachian exile, literally just off the Navajo reservation, starting studies at Duke, the Harvard of the South. I don’t mention how newly married or how financially limited we are. I think Helen could see that for herself.

I tell Bill we have a wonderful neighbor; she’s kind, funny, and she asks me to keep my eye on Sarah while I study.

Imagine my surprise when I fill out my work/study forms and I’m called to meet the Dean of the Duke Chapel. When I enter his office, plush with plum colored carpet, and lined with books in high walnut shelves, Helen is sitting to the right of the Dean and smiling. Did I want to work as the Religious and Arts intern for the Chapel?

Helen. Helen Crotwell. Associate Minister to Duke University. She of the tomato plant named Sarah. Generative within and beyond the structures of higher education and ministry. Her creativity and courage took her into civil rights work and peace work achievement, employee labor unions, and better wages, a center for Women’s Studies, an ecumenical network of chaplains, and of course, religion and the arts.

My most singular memory of her “conceivability” was her work on the “Red Mass”, a yearly worship service designed for and inclusive of every judge in the state of North Carolina. It was her liturgical vision of peace and justice embracing in every small town and steepled courts in Carolina’s cities.

This green life extravagance, this ability to originate can threaten those who rely on externalized authority.  Three months after I’ve left Duke Chapel for a WV parish I learn that the Dean of the Chapel has decreed that Helen is to be replaced by someone of junior rank and experience.

Helen not only survives the forcible uprooting; she thrives as a pastor, is appointed Superintendent and then, shortly before her death, is nominated as a candidate for the UMC episcopacy.

The antonym for generative is not “barren”; it’s consumptive. The opposite of a generative life is a consuming lifestyle or a wasteful heart.  “Don’t be afraid”, I tell my brave tomatoes, “Bloom and grow. You will not be forgotten.”

When is a door not a door.

When it’s ajar.

Crossing a threshold can be an unconscious act. We go through doorways countless times during a day. It can also require intense concentration and even prayer, particularly as age increases and ability goes in another direction.

Moving into an unfamiliar space requires one to be doubly conscious of doors. Where are they? Where do they lead? I could tell when I’d been on the road too long. I’d wake up at night and have to turn on the light to find the bathroom door.

Our shelter in the Covid storm is an old farmhouse that we share with our family, Daniel and Jess.  There are doors galore. There are antique pocket doors that once separated the dining room from the parlor.  First century Romans invented sliding doors, by the way.  All the other doors are hinged, some with the original 1907 brass.  Six doors lie between our bed, now in the place where the dining table once stood, and the half bath. You can count them on one hand, plus the thumb on the other.

There’s the door to the country-long kitchen, the door to the enclosed porch/laundry room, the sliding glass door to the deck, two former doorways turned into shelves along the hall, and the final door to the commode.  Anyone who has accessibility issues will know what I’m talking about.  Only those who are “temporarily able” can afford to ignore counting steps or doors.

Crossing these thresholds is part of a long-distance race for Bill now that he lives on a horizontal stage and plane of life.  I appreciate the fact that Germans invented revolving doors in 1881, but I don’t want to be stuck in this particular round and round.

Enter Danny, Bellevue’s master carpenter, and homo reparens (repairing human). He agrees to create a portal, make an opening in the wall between our former formal dining room, now bed chamber, and the “throne room”.  He picks a likely place on the bathroom side, marking a line in the smooth drywall.

Five minutes later he’s hit a brick wall, literally.  Who knew, but then two inches to the left of his first cut is the edge of an old doorway. The frame is still standing, hidden between studs. We marvel at the revelation of this portal from the past.

The door, Danny says, will take time. He wants to find one to match the old oak and the brick arch. I don’t mind. There will be time to ensure privacy, prevent unwanted attention, or sounds, drafts and odors. Perhaps I’ll even install a knocker or a doorbell when the door arrives so we can take turns announcing ourselves. A door is for providing security by controlling access.

We need access, and behold, a passageway appears like an answer to prayer.

Passageways and portals came first in human habitations; the earliest evidence of doors is found in Egyptian tomb paintings, dating only 4000 years ago. Some doors were not even proper doors, but for decoration, designed to represent a gateway to the afterlife. Thinking about this opens the door to a new reading of Revelation 3:7-8 for me.

When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar.

Rev. 3:8

“I know all about you. And now I have placed before you an open door, which no one can close.

What time is it? I no longer check my cell, the kitchen clock, academic calendar, the clock in the car, or the chimes from Brother College tower. The sun wakes me, slipping through the leaves of the old white oak and the cracks of an old English stained-glass window. What time is it? Morning.

I carry a cup of coffee out to greet the three tomato plants that have climbed leaf by leaf up to the deck from the garden box in the yard. They may make the roof before the first frost. Hannah is ready for our morning rounds. Coffee break over.

We check the young cherry tree, first to be planted after unpacking. My earliest story/memory is a roped seat on a cherry tree and an old man singing as he helps me swing. What time is it? Long, long ago.

The holly, state tree to Delaware, are as tall as the neighbor’s whirligigs. Someday we’ll have privacy as well as berries. Green new deals make good neighbors. Soon and very soon.

The crepe myrtle is mustering a final blossom.  She’s new to me, planted on a whim, but I’m growing fond of the Advent purple she brings.

The small red cedar has rooted in the corner of the yard after a risky transplant from a crack in the sidewalk.  Its survival and thrival consoles me as I note the open space against the sky. The neighborly giant white pine fell into the arms of the Sugar Maple, surrendering in the middle of the last storm, but sparing our fence. “Grow”, I say, to the small cedar, known as the pencil tree. “You can be a Christmas tree. We’ll decorate you with seeds for the birds and the squirrels every year.” Christmas is coming.

I salute the old walnut tree that arches across the fence. I’ve come to make peace.  No need to swear under my breath as I dodge the green grenades that are lobbed into the yard. There are fewer than last fall when I had to put on a hard hat for the morning tour with Hannah.  I pull my red wagon next to the holly and begin to gather the nuts. Bill’s nifty-nabber, a tool for picking up stuff, makes the task easy when my back stiffens. It also helps me distinguish between darker nuts and dog poop. Hannah gets bored and goes back to the kitchen. It’s time for breakfast.

The redbud gets a grateful nod as I pass. Its heart-shaped leaves are working hard on their appointed task: make the metal shed missing a side and part of the roof disappear. Nice neighbor. Very messy. Sometimes the wisdom to accept the things you can’t change means you block the view. This will take some time

I come full circle and stop for a blessing by Mary who guarding a flowerless rose. She stands barefoot and expectant, arms open to the seasons of Falling and Rising. May there be time for every matter under heaven.