When she got there, the cupboard was bare

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
-Henry Ward Beecher

I feel like Mother Hubbard and the cupboard is bare. My books are all packed away; about 70 boxes have gone to storage, another dozen are sealed up and marked with purple duct tape, part of our shipment to Malaysia. They are not all MY books, of course, but I probably know them best, and surely love them most.

I have been surprised at how many times in the last week something has triggered a thought and I have headed for an empty bookshelf - the particular one where the poetry book I want always stands, only to realize it is not there. A lot of the poetry I could find on the web, of course, but it's just not the same. First, I would have to stand in line behind three teenagers for computer time, and then, even when I found the poem I couldn't take it up to bed with a cup of coffee and read it as I snuggle under the aptly named comforter. I couldn't flip a few pages to that other poem I love, and close the book when my eyelids begin to close of their own accord.

I miss knowing where I can find almost any volume - I, who cannot find a pen or a hairbrush when I need one - confident that the passage I want to reread will be easy to find because the pages have been deliberately dog-eared. I miss sorting through the stack of books on my bedside table, deciding which of the five books I am currently reading will fit my mood tonight. I miss trying to figure out where I left off because I fell asleep before I finshed the chapter last time.

And I wonder if electronic media will indeed replace books, if the convenience of holding an entire library of books in the palm of your hand will take the place of the old paper and cardboard objects people have been clutching for the last 400 years or so. I wonder if the book as a physical object will go the way of the phonograph and whether people will be satisfied with disembodied ideas. In some ways that is an appealing idea; I mean, the important thing, the "real" thing about a book is the ideas it creates in one's mind, not the heft of the recycled wood product on which it is printed. But I, at least, feel wedded to the physical object as well.

I remember carefully placing the frightening books I read as a child (and even a teenager, I confess) outside my bedroom door at night and closing the door shut against the fearful object. There were some books I could not have in the room after the lights went out! I have several Bibles from different periods in my life, and sometimes I need a particular one to read when I am looking for comfort. Of course I know that the real comfort comes from the words of God recorded there, not the book itself as some sort of talisman or charm. . . but still, I have so much history with the book, with the page, with tearstains that wrinkle the paper in certain places. . . My husband has shared our bed with books over the years, ones I fall asleep reading and drop somewhere in the blankets. I have grown accustomed to the thunk of a book falling off the bed in the middle of the night when someone stretches in their sleep, and I like the sound.

So, this separation from my comfort objects may be just the thing I need to wean me from their physical presence; I may find the web is faster and easier to search, that anything I really need can be downloaded and carried effortlessly in my purse, that it's freeing not to have to worry about the book I left out on the blanket in the yard under my favorite tree when the rain starts. But I doubt it.

fashion dilemma

Ivy was trying to decide whether to wear a sequined cape from an older sister's ballet perfomance to her ballet class. She kept eyeing it, wondering outloud if the other girls would laugh at her if she wore it. She was obviously capitivated by it, however, and could not take it off. Finally she decided it was just too much. "I would be a glittering disaster!" she pronounced, and left the cape at home.

the uses of suffering

We had two dear little girls live with us for half the year. Their Mom is in prison; their dad is in and out of correctional facilities. We would pray for their parents every night, and we would also pray for my brother, Uncle P, who is incarcerated. It made their own heartache a little more bearable, a little less unmentionable to know that I had a loved one in prison, too.

I saw the girls this weekend. They are living with a lovely foster family who hope to give them a permanent home. My other brother happened to be visiting for the weekend, and came along with me to visit with the girls. After they both leapt in my arms and whispered a few secrets in my ear they wanted to know "who that guy is." I told them he was my brother, Uncle D. J was puzzled, "How did he get here?' she asked. I said he drove to my house for the weekend. Then she challenged me, "How did he get out of jail?" I realized her mistake, told her this was my other brother, and we laughed together about her mistake.

And then I had a curiously warm feeling that took me a moment to decipher. I was happy to share that misfortune with these little ones. Was I glad, I asked myself, that my brother was in prison? Of course not. But I was very glad I could understand some of their own sadness because I had the same grief. And that felt like a small revelation. The phrase from Hebrews 4 immediately came to mind in the King James Version I grew up with and love so well:
For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. I realized I was touched with the feeling of their infirmities, and it was a sweet fellowship.

I found myself pondering what other infirmities I have been touched with that have become a bridge between me and another hurting soul, and I thought of a young woman I know who has a painful relationship with her mother through no fault of her own. The mother has some hard issues of her own which this particular daughter brings to mind. My own mother's issues are completely different, but she has rejected me because of demons that plagued her before I ever existed. I just became the lightning rod that attracted their fury. So, I can sympathize with my young friend, and understand the particular hurt and frustration she feels. I am one who can be touched with the feeling of her infirmities. And that is good.

I remember distinctly the first time I felt I understood the passage in I Corinthians 1 which reminds us that it is "the God of all comfort Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." It gave me a ray of hope in a hard, painful place to realize that NOW I could comfort someone else hurting as badly as I was.

I have never, however, understood the clause in verse 6, "but if we are afflicted it is for your comfort." In what strange (or even sick) way could one person's affliction be the comfort of another? But today I marveled at the wisdom of God who works all things together, and was amazed to think that in the midst of hurts I suffered 30 or 40 years ago, God had my young friend in mind; He knew our paths would cross and she would need the comfort I could give her. How inscrutable are God's ways; how infinite his wisdom. How skillful and deft his weaving.

We all know the platitude, "Misery loves company," but I don't think that really applies to what the little girls and I share. I think Paul's phrase, "the fellowship of . . . sufferings" is far more lovely and apt. It describes the heart-bond that grows from a shared experience, and points us to the sweetness that can be gleaned even from heartache. It reminds us that nearly all experience can be redeemed in one way or another, and that there is indeed comfort in knowing we are not alone. Someone else has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and that makes all the difference.

Psalm 103

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and all that is within me, bless his holy name!

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses,

his acts to the people of Israel.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

He does not deal with us according to our sins,

nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west,

so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

As a father shows compassion to his children,

so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more.

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,

and his righteousness to children's children,

to those who keep his covenant

and remember to do his commandments.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,

and his kingdom rules over all.

caught in the middle

I have always preferred "both/and" to either/or." I have ever and always been fascinated by paradox, by oxymoronica. Contradictions in terms have always intrigued me. I wrote my Masters' thesis on one of the central paradoxes of the church, her existence as an entity "in the world, but not of it." So, I am not really all that uncomfortable finding myself neither here nor there, betwixt and between, saying hello and goodbye in the same breath.

In more than one area of my life I feel like the gentleman in the naughty British humor skit. Named Mr. Bottocks, he was chided for being "neither one nor the other."As a middle-aged mother of a kindergartener and two young adults I often feel uncertain about what universe I belong to. I show up at the doctor's office for some very middle-aged health concerns wearing shiny stickers on my shirt which my 5 year-old carefully affixed. I sit beside the young Mums at beginners ballet; they are watching their first ballerinas while I am cherishing my last. They chat about diapers and feedings; I mentally tick off the items left to do before my eldest boards a plane for India. I talk with the college admissions rep on the phone and stumble over the difficult question, "Is your son a junior or a senior?" She laughs indulgently and makes some comment about how quickly passes; I pour Trix into a red plastic bowl.

But my children are not the only part of my life that keeps me feeling as if I am living in limbo. I am a physical resident of New Hampshire, but mentally I am in Malaysia much of the time. I am surrounded by cues that say winter is coming, but I am preparing for a long, long summer. My eyes are beginning to glaze over when people talk about upcoming events if they are more than three weeks in the future. I feel as I did when I first got bifocals (did I admit that?) - I have to figure out which lens to look through to properly focus.

But I think this is all good practice. It is a good reminder that we are all aliens and strangers here - denizens of earth but citizens of heaven. We all live day-to-day in one place while looking forward eagerly to another. We must cook meals, keep appointments, pay bills and repair cars, all the while knowing none of this will last; it will all be subsumed one day by a greater reality. We have to daily, hourly adjust our focus from close to distant in order to rightly number our days and present to God a heart of wisdom. We need to remember the admonition of the old hymn to "Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in His wonderful face; and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. "

Appalachian Melody

Appalachian Melody

Mark Heard

Appalachian melody drifting softly down
Instruments of gold and red and brown
Do not need no dulcimer or banjo-fiddle sound
For right now I'll watch these leaves come down

How peculiar liking old dead leaves against the sky
There is something more than meets the eye
Funny how I sit and watch these leaves come down from high
But these things are music to my eyes

Such a pretty song I see, have I been beguiled
This day is not imagination's child
Every time the leaves come down I've just got to smile
For they sing a melody so mild

How peculiar liking old dead leaves against the sky
There is something more than meets the eye
Funny how I sit and watch these leaves come down from high
But these things are music to my eyes

Cinderella season

Fall is here, and will be gone before I embrace it if I hesitate at all. The most ephemeral and the most lovely of seasons has always been my favorite. It's the time when the trees finally come into their own. After serving as a foil for the flowers of spring and summer they are for a brief time on center stage. Like Cinderella, they magically shed their common garb for the jewel tones of topaz and amber.

As I ran my usual errands the other day I felt as if I had stepped into a picture postcard. The drab little town where I do my grocery shopping had disappeared. In its place was a scene from a Robert Frost poem or a Maxfield Parrish painting. The Revolutionary War era churchyard lay under a blanket of brightly stained leaves, guarded by towering red maples. Over them all was the spire of a clapboard Colonial church, bright white against a blue sky that looked like a Della Robbia creation.

My daily walk up a dirt road overhung by maples and birch resembled nothing so much as a pointilist painting, tiny dots of color in great drifts along the side of the road. The slightest breeze would shake loose a flurry of yellow leaves which drifted litingly toward the ground, dancing to the unheard music of some autumnal symphony, a lovely prelude to the snowstorms to come. Sometimes a whisper of a breeze would dislodge only one or two which would pirouette gracefully to the earth, like dancers who had the stage to themselves for a fleeting moment.

Tourists flock to New England for these two weeks, but I think those of us who live here year round are even more amazed by the transformation the familiar landscape undergoes. For eleven months of the year we live amid the stark grays of November and December, the cold white of January and February, the muddy browns of March and April, the yellowy green of May and June, and the deep emerald of July, August and September. Every year October is a surprise. It is impossible to remember the brilliance of these short weeks.

It is also impossible to capture the scent of autumn, the deep, loamy perfume that belongs only to this place and this time. It is a mixture of the sweetness of pine, the musty smell of wet leaves, the spicy scent of moss. If it were possible to bottle this smell I would spray it on my pillow everynight, bury my face in it and dream of yellow woods and sapphire skies. It is as distinctive as the landscape but far more evocative than a photograph.

There are places on earth where it is always summer, and places where it is always winter. But nowhere is there eternal fall. It is by necessity fleeting, floating, evanescent, transitory. As the transition from summer to winter, the dying passage, it cannot last. It is a time to seize the day or to rue the lost opportunity.

learning all the time

I am a firm believer in the theory of trickle-down education. As my homeschooling career has progressed, or regressed, over the years I have found I spend less time with my younger children than I did with their older siblings at a similar age. Much less. It's a problem I share with every other homeschooling mother I have ever met. The younger children have to pick up a lot more on their own since their parents are too busy driving older kids to sports, music lessons, jobs, drivers ed, etc. We all, to a woman, feel guilty over this situation, and worry that our later children will fulfill every NEA prophecy and turn into the village idiots.

So, I am ever so happy to se any evidence of precocity on the part of my five year old, although I know she owes little of it to me. Watching and listening to her older siblings she has picked up an amazing amount of information, most of it actually useful. One day when her little friends wanted to do a play of Peter Pan, a respectable classic in its own right, my five year old was agitating for the legend of Icarus and Daedalus instead. When she arrived at the pond beach another day she rushed over to her dam-building friend, brandishing a shovel and shouting, "Do you need assistance??" Today when I was running out to the grocery store I told her which of her older siblings was in charge. Wishing to cover all her bases she asked about the next child in the pecking order, "Does M have authority over me while you are gone?" Have authority over me??

What else trickles down at our house? Taste in movies, for one. Although our eldest children never saw anything more frightening than Beauty and the Beast until they were 9 or 10, our younger children are fans of Ocean's Eleven, The Patriot and AirForce One. My five year old loves old I Love Lucy shows and can even appreciate much of Hogan's Heroes though the humor is aimed at adults. She will even watch Monty Python in a pinch.

Taste in music seems to trickle down, too. Our youngest sings songs from The Phantom of the Opera and Wicked as often as she regales us with Raffi or Sharon, Lois and Bram tunes. She recognizes Santana playing at the grocery store and will happily listen to old Beatles music in the back seat. I have been glad to see that good taste in clothing seems to be catching as well. Playing the SkyBreeze online dressup game today she rejected several articles of teenage clothing as "not very modest." I doubt if she could define the concept, but she knows it when she sees it, (don't we all!).

But seriously, it is reassuring to see that what I have always spouted as the homeschooling company line, that children learn all the time, still appears to be true. Though Miss Independent doesn't want to practice her handwriting when I finally do guiltily drag out a workbook, she has decided she likes to copy words off the globe; today she presented me with a page reading "Botswana" and "Namibia" and asked what she had written. She's gotten pretty good at finidng Malaysia, as well. When my eldest was her age we were earnestly beginning piano AND violin lessons, but the baby of the family has not taken a music lesson. She has, however, learned how to play the melody of the old country song "I'm Not Lisa" on the piano. No, it's not Mozart, but it is recognizable.

So amidst the moving boxes, doctor's visits, trips to the airport, phone calls from Dad, constant visitors, and drives to ballet she continues to learn. I'm not spoonfeeding anymore; some days I just leave the brain food lying around the house, but somehow it finds its way into her inquisitive little mind. Will wonders never cease.

a prayer

"Grant, O Lord my God, that I may never fall away in success or in failure; that I may not be prideful in prosperity nor dejected in adversity. Let me rejoice only in what unites us and sorrow only in what separates us. May I strive to please no one or fear to displease anyone except Yourself. May I seek always the things that are eternal and never those that are only temporal. May I shun any joy that is without You and never seek any that is beside You. O Lord, may I delight in any work I do for You and tire of any rest that is apart from You. My God, let me direct my heart towards You, and in my failings, always repent with a purpose of amendment."
--St. Thomas Aquinas