Remembering Margie/Mom/Tutu 2014

February 23

The house feels strange and too quiet this morning without my mom. She was strong and confident enough to send me off to Ministers Week last Sunday while she stayed home alone. Then the end came quickly after I got back. I'm glad we celebrated her 89th last July; a good reminder not to wait to celebrate one another. 

We called her Tutu; she died on 2/22.

 Marguerite Barker Vaughan
July 14, 1924 – February 22, 2014

For a girl who was born in a farmhouse in Kansas and grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Bartlesville OK, Margie lived life large. She was the seventh of eight children and the only one to go to college. Margie married the love of her life at Harding College in Arkansas on his graduation day; Tolbert Fanning Vaughan liked to say he "got his Bachelors in the morning and lost it that afternoon." Together they served Churches of Christ from Florida to Texas and together they raised four children: David Vaughan of Houston TX, Charlotte Vaughan Coyle and Jerry of Paris TX, Frances Vaughan of Oklahoma City OK, Jonathan Vaughan and Julie of Kingwood TX. Tolbert died much too early; Margie lived without him as many years as she had lived with him and she never stopped missing him. But she had many good friends at the Juliette Fowler Christian Homes in Dallas and she had a family that loved her dearly. She was a proud, grateful "Tutu" to five grandchildren and their spouses: Benjamin Coyle and Hillary, Rachel Coyle and Carl, Jacob Coyle, Kayla Vaughan and Taylor, Zachary Vaughan. Three extra grandchildren: Stephanie, Elizabeth and Jonathan Brewer; three great-grandchildren: Benjamin Thomas Coyle, Andrew Bryant Coyle and Avery Daniel Vaughan Channing; and many precious nieces and nephews. 

Even when her ability to get out and about was severely limited these past two years, Margie would whip out her iPad-mini and Google names and places and events she heard about on the news. Every month, Margie would send her little widow's offering to Week of Compassion for benevolence and disaster relief around the world. 

If you would like to honor her life, you are invited to join her in supporting Week of Compassion. www.weekofcompassion.org 

Or help support the wonderful ministry for seniors at Juliette Fowler Homes. 

www.juliettefowler.org

Family and friends will gather Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m. in the Bright Holland Chapel to celebrate Margie and thank God for her life. Rev. Lory Hunt will be there for us like she has always been. There will be time for visiting after the service.

February 24

It was 1944, the year after Margie's freshman year at Harding College. She had met the man she wanted to marry, a bright funny passionate preacher student. 

But her father had only promised to pay for one year of college (she was, after all, only a girl.) So Margie came home to Bartlesville, plucked up her courage and made an appointment to go over to Phillips Petroleum Company to meet Mr. Phillips himself. Since she and her little quartet had sung at his recent birthday party, she figured he just might give her a loan. I loved hearing her describe walking the very long distance from the door of his office to his massive desk; how her feet sank deep into the carpet; how Mr. Phillips' accountant was there, scowling. She got her loan; she married my dad; and they paid it off $10 and $20 at a time. They whittled their debt down to a $100 or so and Margie moved home in the summer of 1946 to work and finally pay it off. She hated being separated from her beloved, but she loved being able to deliver that last payment to the cynical accountant - her triumph over his disbelief. She was 22 years old; now she's timeless. All debts are paid. And she will never be separated from love and life again.

February 25

I still don't know how she did it. Margie raised four children on a small town preacher's salary, moved our home every three years at the whim of church folks, and endured the loss of my dad when she was only 56. 

 

She made me crazy sometimes. (I'm sure it is much more correct to say we made each other crazy!) But the strength of stubbornness and perseverance and hope is incalculable. "One day at a time," she always said.

February 26

I stopped by to see Mom this morning. She looks nice but she doesn't look like herself; she's not supposed to. When the life force leaves, there is an instant and remarkable change. And Margie had a remarkable, tenacious life force. 

Mom got sick Thursday morning but she rallied when cousin Mike came for a visit Friday afternoon. She sat in her recliner and told stories, identified people in photographs, shared memories, laughed. This is the last picture we have; she was gone 26 hours later.

Margie loved to send greeting cards to her loved ones; she even mastered e-cards on her little iPad. The box of cards still sitting on her desk this morning says: "Dance as if no one were watching. Sing as if no one were listening. Live every day as if it were your last."

February 27

My Momma taught me how to cut up a chicken, fold socks just so, stack the towels all the same way, write thank you notes on time, and iron like a pro. 

 

I still stack my towels all the same way, write thank you notes kinda sorta on time and could cut up a chicken if push came to shove. 

These last two years my Momma taught me more about myself than I ever knew. I am humbled and grateful.

 

February 28, 2014

A Tribute to Margie

Created by Jonathan Vaughan

Even if you don't know my family or if you are getting tired of hearing me talk about Mom, you will do yourself a favor if you take a few minutes to watch this beautiful video created by my brother Jon. He and my other amazing brother, David, took all the photos at the opening. I am so blessed to be a part of this family.

"One of the greatest gifts that Mom gave me (Jonathan) was the gift of music. She not only taught me to sing harmony as a young child, but taught me to appreciate classical music as well. One piece in particular was Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite. The music in this video is from the first movement, Morning Mood (Suite No. 1, Op. 46)"

A celebration of Margie, Mom, Tutu

 March 1

Margie/Mom/Tutu died one week ago today. It was a long, hard Saturday but like every other day the Lord has made, it was a day shot through with grace. Two years ago, mom went in for a simple, day surgery and ended up in ICU on life support. It was another long, hard time as she fought her way back: not to what had been (nothing would ever be the same) but still courageous to do the best she could with what life had dealt her. 

It was like that again and again for Margie. Life is seldom what it "should be" or what we wish it were, but faith and hope and love allow us to see the grace that is. 

This morning I found her Bible study notes on her neatly ordered desk and found this from her reading in the Gospel of John, the story of water to wine: "You have saved the best til now," she wrote. So "now" that great eschatological banquet to which John's Jesus pointed is hers. (She Googled "eschatological" then but now Margie really knows.)

March 2

People and relationships are always complex, complicated. I'm guessing that's especially true of many mothers and daughters. I used to believe my mom and I were nothing alike but the past two years showed me how very much alike we are - the strength and the stubbornness, the wisdom and the foolishness. 

Mom shopped at Gene the Jewelers going out of business sale and bought me a lovely Jim Shore angel on the 75% off table; an angel with one wing missing. It's the perfect metaphor: I have been her angel but always an imperfect and broken one. 

We clashed a couple weeks ago, both of us so sure we were right. That evening, I was in my den watching TV and she was in her den 50 feet away. She emailed me and we made up. A couple days later we went out for lunch and that evening she emailed me again. "I saw as we sat at Denny's how beautiful you still are. I feel old as dirt. That's pretty dog-gone old, ain't it?! Love, Me." We laughed and hugged. I wish we had done that more. Grateful to be surrounded by grace.

March 5

Gifts of Grace from our Amazing Second Graders. Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet is donated to the Aikin Elementary School Library by Mrs. Henderson's class in honor of Margie Vaughan. The personal heartfelt messages are priceless

Smiles and tears here.

March 6

Margie loved her two years at Harding College; the stories she told were filled with funny antics that elicited stern words of wisdom from Miss Cathcart, the dorm mother, and starry eyed tales of being in love with a handsome preacher student. 

But from then on, it seems, life tried to cram her into numerous boxes: submissive preacher's wife, textbook mother, perfect hostess, ideal role model. 

Where do these boxes come from? Why do we let them define us and bind us? Margie resisted; not always well or wisely but I think she always wanted the freedom to be who she was. That is our journey: to become who we are created to be. That is our hope: to see face to face and to know as we are known.

March 8

Mom was very weak when she moved to Paris in June 2012 but as she regained strength, I piled the dining table high with old albums, photographs and pens. She took her time shuffling through memories and sorting them out. She wrote notes on the backs of pictures and divided them into piles in various Ziploc pouches marked: Charlotte, David, Fran, Jon and others for all the grandchildren. We each received our bag full of memories and we had time to hear the stories once again. 

Sometimes remembering the past can give us strength and wisdom to live into our future. Recalling the stories of who we have been helps us make better sense of who we are.

March 9

I started first grade in Jacksonville Florida where a large Navy base is located. 

We moved there from Pensacola, another Navy town and our home developed a reputation among the young flight officers as a safe haven. In both places on frequent Saturday nights, cadets would party in town then come find the door unlocked at the Vaughan house; they would sleep wherever they found space. Mom would get up early on Sundays to walk through the house and discover how many people were sleeping on sofas, chairs and floors. She would pour enough orange juice for everyone and serve them "in bed." The catch was - they knew they had to get up on Sunday morning in time to make it to church. I had such a crush on some of those beautiful young men. 

Now I have Mother's mahogany salad bowls our friend Jack brought her from Haiti.

March 11

My Dad died 34 years ago today; he took Mom out to lunch then went back to his little pastor’s office in Florida, laid his head on his desk and died. Mom knew something was wrong when he wasn’t there to pick her up from work. He was 54; she was 56. 

I have railed against Tolbert’s death: too young, too abrupt, too painful. Losing him changed all of us in deep ways and certainly Margie bore the brunt. Picking up the pieces and starting over … how did she do it? I don’t know. 

Now all these years later, it is her chair that’s empty. But in these last two years, she had time to laugh with three beautiful great-grands, to follow the phases of the moon, to ponder the difference between daffodils and jonquils, to say good-bye. I don’t understand the mysteries of life and death. But today I am grateful.

March 12

Today is Jerry's birthday. I found his birthday card ready to go in the March pocket of Mom’s birthday book. “Happy Birthday Son-in-law! Thinking of you on your birthday and wishing you many joys to discover, special memories to treasure, and new dreams to look forward to – because you deserve it all.” 

Margie was the greeting card queen; she never missed a birthday. 

I’m still amazed at Jerry’s gracious hospitality inviting my mother into our home. It wasn’t easy but it was right and good. 

Today I’m remembering when she spent time with us in Hawaii. I was pregnant with my second baby and Jerry was about to leave on his Navy deployment for several weeks. There’s this vivid memory of Jerry and Margie and little Benjamin line dancing in our living room to the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. She wore his cowboy hat and taught them the steps. Jerry found a friendly little gecko and placed it on her shoulder but then the terrified gecko promptly scurried down into Tutu’s muu muu. Probably not his best move but we all laughed about it for many a year. 

Happy Birthday Jerry. Thank you for loving my mom. Thank you for loving me.

March 17

I came home from work one afternoon to find little heart-shaped sticky notes posted all over the kitchen counters: thank you for the orange juice, thank you for the coffee, thank you for the blueberries…

Sometimes mom and I had a hard time saying “thank you” to each other. I wonder why. Two strong willed women who didn’t want to admit we needed any help? Letting old baggage get in the way of common courtesy? But we each yearned for the reassurance of simple gratitude from one another, so we would too often revert to the little girl in us to say: “Look at me. Notice me. I need your attention.” How childish of us. 

 

Demanding gratitude is just one more way we try to control others. But living in the joyful innocence of gratitude without expecting any thanks in return frees us to lavish sticky notes of grace all over our world.

March 18

I found a notebook on Mom’s desk, a scrapbook she had been working on. I had no idea.

MOTHER.
2 Her Daughter.
M.
Preview.
Pages from the Past

Inside there are yellowed clips from the Bartlesville News. “Marguerite Barker, who is attending Harding college, Searcy Arkansas, has been selected a member of the girls intramural all star softball team. In announcing the selection, the college newspaper said: Barker was an active player, good sport, good hitter and played heads up. Barker was known to all the players as Butch.” Another clip says: “Tolbert Vaughan Jr. will deliver the sermon at the Church of Christ in Bartlesville. He is visiting this week in the home of Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Barker and daughter, Marguerite. “Buddy” as he is known to his friends, is a ministerial student at Harding.”

Even though I’ve heard lots of stories about "Butch and Buddy," there is still so much I don’t know; and now I never will. Stories are so very important. Telling our stories as honestly as we are able. Hearing others’ stories with compassion and curiosity. And remembering we all are a small but still significant part of THE one overarching Story of Love and Grace. Thanks Mom.

March 20

1 wheelchair, 2 walkers, 1 bedside commode, 1 shower chair – all this equipment is now passed on to help someone else live life a little more comfortably. Mom said her little rollator walker felt like an extension of her own body; it allowed her so much more freedom then she could ever have had on her own. 

And oh how she loved her scooter! She was all over Oak Creek every chance she got: visiting with the neighbors and bringing home the latest news, stealing magnolia blossoms and checking out the progress on the new house. Jerry would put the scooter in the back of the van and we would tool around the Plaza looking at classic cars or wander around the shores of the lake. I am so grateful she had these things to help her live as well as possible in these last years. I am so very grateful she doesn’t need them anymore.

May 22

Margie/Mom/Tutu has been gone three months today. 

My brother David snapped this iconic image just a few months after our dad died. Margie and Tolbert would have been married 69 years this week.

 Ash Wednesday 2014

Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.
More real to me than it has ever been before.
But not the end of The Story.

July 14, 2014

On her 90th birthday, we said our final good-byes to Margie/Mom/Tutu. 

We have tears in our eyes, dirt on our hands and peace in our hearts.

Me: "Mom, you are a piece of work!"
Margie/Mom/Tutu: "You mean - a Masterpiece of work!"

Yep.

Holding on to Hope in Such a World

A friend of mine visited Auschwitz a few years ago; they showed us their pictures and shared some of the stories from that evil time. The realities of the Holocaust are chilling, horrific, gut wrenching.

How did they hold on to hope in such a world?

Some of history’s calamities have been conceived and spawned by humanity’s twisted malevolence: massacres and pogroms and persecutions. Sometimes it is the devastations of nature that roar and rage or slowly strangle the life out of entire regions of the earth. Whether natural or man-made, the people who endure such tragedy are changed forever.

How do they hold on to hope in such a world?

Lately I have felt so disheartened by the current events of our own world; I feel powerless and hopeless. I can hardly bear to read the news: horrible stories of war, torture and inhumanity across the globe; depressing stories about the immoral and unethical antics of our United States Congress; heart breaking stories about police brutality and America’s entrenched racism; alarming stories about the misuse and neglect of our land and air and water; painful stories about too many of my friends who, every single day of their life, walk an economic tightrope between security and disaster.

How do any of us hold on to hope

when everything around us seems completely hopeless?

A few years ago, one of my pastoral counseling professors from seminary wrote an important book about hope. Every now and again, I open this book from Dr. Andrew Lester and re-read it so that I can find my center again. Dr. Lester teaches that lived hope is grounded in reality, is oriented toward possibility and is made possible within community.

Hope is deeply connected to

Reality,

Possibility,

Community.

When hope is grounded in reality, our eyes are wide open. Reality allows us to name our situation honestly and to recognize the challenges unambiguously. Hope doesn’t see the world through rose-colored-glasses; it is not wishful thinking; it knows how hard this is. But hope also sees a larger reality, a bigger picture than that which is available to our human eyes. Hope counts on this other invisible reality that exists simply because God exists. Even when everything we see and experience appears to be hopeless, hope taps into the other reality of God’s presence in the world, the Creator’s movement in and with creation.

When we learn to see both the visible and the invisible realities, we can look at the facts of our situation and say: “yes – but.” We can look at all the evidence and say: “nevertheless” - something else is true besides our obvious circumstances. We are enabled to see the bigger picture of what God has done and what God is doing in the possibilities of the future. 

 

People who live life from faith have always been oriented toward the future. The very definition of “faith” is movement toward something that cannot be seen; stepping out on a path even when we don’t know where it will lead; heading in a direction that may be completely irrational and unreasonable. People of faith can live with this kind of confidence because they are deeply and irrevocably people of hope. The goal, the future, the hope, the impossible possibility: God is forever bringing all things together in wholeness and shalom in spite of what we humans keep doing to ourselves and each other.

There is one final leg in this three-legged stool of hope that Andy Lester talks about:

lived hope is grounded in reality,

is oriented toward future possibility

and is made possible within community.

As a matter of fact, hope cannot be lived in isolation; it is community that creates and nurtures hope.

Madeline L’Engle tells of a time when she held onto life by a thread and could not pray; her community of faith held on to hope for her, she says. Jean Estes experienced the death of her newborn grandson and gives thanks for a community that “held her hope for her” in the days when she could not hold onto hope for herself.

That’s a powerful image: holding on to hope for one another. We are woven together, knit together, connected together in a fabric of humanity, each of us individually a significant part of the whole. All of us together bound up in the mystery of mutuality and community. 

Andy Lester says because of this deep connection there can be a kind of “contagious hope” that wells up within a community; seeds of hope can take root and grow into a lush, fruitful garden of hopeful expectation.

But there is a flip side: there also is an “infectious hopelessness” that can take hold within a community. Sometimes a people will despair over their current circumstances, cannot imagine an alternative, become so fixated by their past that they become closed off to the future. In these dark days, even a few persistent people who keep themselves grounded in the reality of God’s past and present work of faithfulness and who keep themselves oriented to a future with hope can spark a contagious optimism within an entire community.

There is much to be discouraged about in today’s world; I don’t know what will come of our current social, ecological and political situations. Sometimes I feel hopeless and powerless; sometimes the anger wells up and the tears flow; I’m afraid it will get worse before it gets better.

But then again, during this season of Christmas, I remember that today’s world is really not so different from the world into which the Christ Child was born. We tend to romanticize the baby in the manger and downplay the poverty, oppression, prejudice and danger that permeated the lives of so many people in the 1^st century C.E. of the Roman Empire. But the point of the Christmas story is that God-in-Christ chose to enter into the hopelessness of humanity by becoming the incarnation of hope. Ultimately, the love-peace-joy-hope we celebrate during Christmas is the startling and undeserved action of the Divine moving constantly in a dark and broken world. 

I love Mary, the mother of Jesus; I love what she symbolizes for me, for us. 

When Mary recognized the movement of the Holy, she risked everything to become a part of the world-changing events that were gestating all around her. She allowed hope to grow within her until she was able to birth infant possibilities, impossible possibilities. In the midst of her own disadvantages – a poor minority woman living in a police state - Mary did what she was able to do, did what she was given to do and opened herself up to a future with hope.

So now, in our own evil time, let this work of Christmas be ours to do every day of the year:

live gracefully in love,

grow boldly into peace,

discover repeatedly this joy,

hold on stubbornly to this hope …

each of us individually and all of us together embodying and midwifing God’s impossible possibilities.

Charlotte Vaughan Coyle

December 2014

Andrew D. Lester, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995). 

I am grateful for the grassroots efforts of Coffee Party USA - opening eyes and helping to do the hard work of bringing people together. I'm proud to be a part.

Madeleine L’Engle writes about her brush with death and long recovery because of a 1991 automobile accident in her book The Rock That is Higher (2002).

Find Jean Estes’ powerful interview in The Work of the People. 

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/finding-god-in-the-grief

Apache Virgin with Child courtesy of freshworship.org

Holding on to Hope

Friends of mine visited Auschwitz a few years ago; they showed us their pictures and shared some of the stories from that evil time. The realities of the Holocaust are chilling, horrific, gut wrenching. I can almost hear these sufferers praying their ancient Psalm: I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me?!

How did they hold on to hope in such a time?

The Jews of the Exile for whom Jeremiah wrote lived far from their homes as captives in Babylon. Their Temple was destroyed, their holy city lay in ruins; every family had lost someone in the war and the memories of destruction and defeat continued to break their hearts.

How did they hold on to hope in such a time?

The Christians of Asia to whom John wrote The Revelation lived in constant fear within the Roman Empire. Denying the emperor as Lord and confessing Jesus as the Christ instead labeled them as traitors and subversives. We’ve all heard of the atrocities, the economic persecutions and even the martyrdom of many who refused to deny their faith.

How did they hold on to hope in such a time?

Lately I have felt so discouraged by the current events of our own world; discouraged and powerless and hopeless. I can hardly bear to read the news: horrible stories of war, torture and inhumanity across the globe; depressing stories about the antics of our United States Congress; heart breaking stories about police brutality and America’s entrenched racism; painful stories about too many of my friends who, every single day of their life, walk an economic tightrope between security and disaster.

How do any of us hold on to hope

when everything around us seems completely hopeless?

A few years ago, one of my pastoral counseling professors from seminary wrote an important book about hope. Every now and again, I open this book from Dr. Andrew Lester and re-read it so that I can find my center again. Dr. Lester teaches that lived hope is grounded in reality, is oriented toward possibility and is made possible within community.

Hope is deeply connected to

Reality,

Possibility,

Community.

When hope is grounded in reality, our eyes are wide open. Reality allows us to name our situation honestly and to recognize the challenges unambiguously. Hope doesn’t see the world through rose-colored-glasses; it is not wishful thinking; it knows how hard this is. But hope also sees a larger reality, a bigger picture than that which is available to our human eyes. Hope counts on this other invisible reality that exists simply because God exists.

Christian Hope is grounded in the alternative reality that came into being through the action of God in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Even when everything we see and experience appears to be hopeless, hope taps into the other reality of God’s presence in the world, God’s movement in and with creation.

When we learn to see both the visible and the invisible realities, we can look at the facts of our situation and say: “yes – but.” We can look at all the evidence and say: “nevertheless” - something else is true besides our obvious circumstances. We are enabled to see the bigger picture of what God has done and what God is doing in the possibilities of the future. 

 

People of faith have always been pointed toward the future. The very definition of “faith” is movement toward something that cannot be seen; stepping out on a path even when we don’t know where it will lead; heading in a direction that may be completely irrational and unreasonable. People of faith can live with this kind of confidence because people of faith are deeply and irrevocably people of hope.

“Our hope is [grounded] in our relationship with a trustworthy God whose character is marked by a faithful, steadfast love for us,” Dr. Lester says. “As the Lord told Jeremiah: Surely I know the plans I have for you…plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). For Christians, the quintessential “future with hope” is revealed and made real in the incarnation: Jesus Christ, the embodied expression of God’s faithfulness is the reason we can hope in the “not-yet-ness” of our future. For Christians, it is in Christ that God’s “new covenant” promised by Jeremiah is coming into being. “They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord…” The goal, the future, the Christian hope, the impossible possibility: God in Christ is forever bringing all things together in wholeness and shalom.

There is one final leg in this three-legged stool of hope that Andy Lester talks about:

lived hope is grounded in reality,

is oriented toward future possibility

and is made possible within community.

As a matter of fact, hope cannot be lived in isolation; it is community that creates and nurtures hope.

Christians of the First Century experienced immense oppression by the institutional powers of their day; the Empire had, after all, crucified their Christ. As Christian theologians reflected on the true nature of power and as communities of believers re-told the story, they came to understand  “the Lamb that had been slaughtered” as the powerful Risen Lord. The One who entered into the rending violence of the world is the One who is bringing all creation together in perfect unity and harmony. People who had no obvious reason to hope gathered within communities of hope and held on to hope with and for one another. Lived hope lived out in community served as antidote to the fears that surrounded them whenever they walked out their front door.

Madeline L’Engle tells of a time when she held onto life by a thread and could not pray; her community of faith prayed and held on to hope for her, she says. Jean Estes experienced the death of her beloved grandson and gives thanks for a community that “held her hope for her” in the days when she could not hold onto hope for herself.

That’s a powerful image: holding on to hope for one another. We are woven together, knit together, connected together in a fabric of humanity, each of us individually a significant part of the whole. All of us together bound up in the mystery of mutuality and community.

Andy Lester says because of this deep connection there can be a kind of “contagious hope” that wells up within a community; seeds of hope can take root and grow into a lush, fruitful garden of hopeful expectation. 

But there is a flip side: there also is an “infectious hopelessness” that can take hold within a community. Sometimes a people will despair over their current circumstances, cannot imagine an alternative, become so fixated by their past that they become closed off to the future. In these dark days, even a few persistent people who keep themselves grounded in the reality of God’s past and present work of faithfulness and who keep themselves oriented to God’s future with hope can spark a contagious optimism within an entire community.

There is much to be discouraged about in today’s world; I don’t know what will come out of our current social and political situations. Sometimes I feel hopeless and powerless; sometimes the anger wells up, the tears flow and I’m afraid it will get worse before it gets better.

But then again, I remember that today’s world is really not so different from the world into which the Christ Child was born. We tend to romanticize the baby in the manger and downplay the poverty, oppression, prejudice and danger that permeated the lives of so many people in the First Century of the Roman Empire. But the point of the Christmas story is that God-in-Christ chose to enter into the hopelessness of humanity by becoming the incarnation of hope.    

Ultimately, the love-peace-joy-hope we celebrate during the Christmas season is the startling and undeserved action of the Divine in a dark and broken world. The presence of the Holy within and among us is God’s Christmas Gift to “every tribe and language and people and nation.”

And so, in our own evil time, during these dark days, this may be ours to do: live gracefully in love, grow boldly into peace, discover repeatedly this joy, hold on stubbornly to this hope … each of us individually and all of us together embodying yet again God’s impossible possibilities.

A Reading from Psalm 42

As a deer longs for flowing streams,

so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

My tears have been my food day and night,

while people say to me continually: Where is your God?

I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me?!

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God, my soul;

God is my Help; the Lord is my God. 

Jeremiah 31:31-34                     

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant  … This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Revelation 5:6-14                        

Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered…He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sing a new song:

            You are worthy to take the scroll

                        and to open its seals,

            for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God

                        saints from every tribe and language and people and nation…

Andrew D. Lester, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).

Madeleine L’Engle writes about her brush with death and long recovery because of a 1991 automobile accident in her book The Rock That is Higher (2002).

Find Jean Estes’ powerful interview in the important ministry of The Work of the People. 

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/finding-god-in-the-grief

Apache Virgin with Child courtesy of freshworship.org

Out of My Place, Into My Place

I grew up a conservative Southern girl who knew her place.

My family and my church were not bad; I knew I was accepted and affirmed. Within limits. I knew I had opportunities and possibilities. Up to a point. No one intentionally held me back or put me down or kept me out. No one limited me in order to be hateful or mean; everyone was very nice about it. I call it benevolent sexism, a patronizing attitude shared by the people in my life that kept me in my place. But it was the systemic sexism of my world that blinded all of us to the deep damage we were doing by limiting the full humanity of half the people on the planet.

It was the questions that saved me. Questioning why things should be the way they were. Wondering what sense it made that males should have advantages that females didn’t have. Challenging the status quo that kept some people in “a place” just because that designation made other people feel more comfortable.

And it was the questions that opened up my world. Once I understood that my place should not be defined by other people’s expectations but rather by my own internal sense of who I am and what I am called to be and do, then my world grew larger than I ever imagined. And once I stepped out of “my place” and into a larger world, I was able to see the experiences of other people through a radically different lens.

My Black sisters and brothers for example. Growing up, even though I was nice about it, I still assumed they too had a “place.” Benevolent Racism. Like a fish in water, I couldn’t recognize that I was swimming in a culture of embedded injustice; that I was breathing the air of a world permeated by inequity. Systemic racism.

Our nation is grounded in the soil of slavery and racism is part of our DNA. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at the systemic racism that has been pervasive in America since our very beginnings; America is congenitally racist. And some of the attitudes we are seeing in these days are anything but benevolent; hatred and cruelty are all too common.

But much of the divide we currently experience is from invisible assumptions (often hidden even from ourselves) that there are some Americans who are stepping out of their “place.” We may not be unkind; we probably don’t mean to be hurtful. But whenever we unwittingly duplicate the patronizing values of the system; whenever we uncritically assume that white or male is the norm; whenever we criticize anyone who challenges the status quo of power and privilege – then we participate in limiting the full humanity of a good portion of the people on this planet. Benevolent Racism is still racism.

Maybe it will be the questions that save us. Questioning why some people should live with unearned advantage while others are at a constant disadvantage. Wondering why sharing power with more people makes some other people uncomfortable. What are we afraid of?

My own journey has been relatively uneventful; awareness and change unfolded until I was able to take a leap into the larger world that has, for the most part, fully accepted and affirmed my choices. However the experiences of my Black sisters continue to be limited and the lives of my Black brothers continue to be in danger every time they walk out their doors. 

If America is finally going to move beyond sexism and racism - no matter how benevolent people’s intentions may be - we must remove our blinders and begin to see and celebrate our world in all of its multi-colored, many textured reality. It is this reality that can be our salvation: each of us in the place where we can become all that we are meant to be. All of us in the place where we are creating that world together.