peacocks

I drove almost a mile up a gravel road, to the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere.  I walked up the steps to the porch of a trailer that had been home to my patient for 65 years.  And then, among the chickens, the rusted cars, the sheds and dilapidated fence I saw this amazing bird.

I've seen peacocks before.  They belong in a movie.  Their creativity and color is outrageous.  You could easily blame it on an overzealous special effects team.

Or a zoo.  Where people pay money and expect to gawk in wonder at rare and wonderful animals.

Or the lawn of the Biltmore Estate.  With all that opulence and grandeur, the regal peacock would feel right at home.

But here?  In the back woods, among dogs and chickens?  No crowds or photographers or lines.  Just one awestruck chaplain on a porch, smiling at the incongruity, enjoying the show, marveling at the colors and design.  WOW.

Every time I read Aaron Niequist's blog, I find a quote I just have to adopt.  Here's the latest...

“. . all the beauty of the world, the beauty that calls our admiration, our gratitude, our worth-ship at the earthly level, is meant as a set of hints, of conspiratorial whispers, of clues and suggestions and flickers of light, all nudging us into believing that behind the beautiful world is not random chance but the loving God.”  N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth

tobacco

I'm about as against tobacco as a human can get.  But this story, from a darling ninety year old, almost made me soft on the stuff.

One of ten children, Anna was the dependable one.  Her daddy taught her to drive when she was eight years old.  He needed someone to bring him the truck in the middle of the day when he had worked his way to the far sides of the Florida citrus fields.  Anna flooded the engine twice and ran off the road into a ditch.  But daddy got a mule and pulled the truck out.  By the end of the day, eight year old Anna could drive.


The summer Anna turned thirteen, Granddaddy from Georgia asked for help.  He needed hands in his tobacco fields.  Anna and her two sisters took a bus to GA and began long days of stringin' tobacco in the hot and humid fields.


Granddaddy also got some help from a neighbor family with eleven children.  They sent two of their boys over.  On their first morning of work, the boys joined in to help the girls catch up for lunch.  One of the boys, Roy, was a fourteen year old with "the sweetest smile you ever saw on a handsome face."  Roy would hand Anna leaves of tobacco and she would hand them to her sister.  Every once in a while Anna would grab for some leaves and all she would get was Roy's empty hand.  He thought this was hilarious. 


And that was the summer.  By fall, Anna was back in Florida.  During the week she stayed with her two sisters in a boarding house and worked every day at a citrus plant.   On weekends she would drive the girls thirty miles to be home with their parents and to help on their strawberry farm.


Roy wrote letters.  He was working in a meat factory.  He hated it.  "If I knew I could get a job near you, I would be there in a second."  He told her.


Thirteen year old Anna tucked the letter in her pocket and went to find her boss.  "I know a man who needs a job.  We lost our driver and we need this man to drive all three of us to the city each week or all three of us girls will quit." Anna fibbed.  The boss didn't want to lose three hard workers.  He pondered the dilemma and then told her that he had a worker leaving on Friday.  "If your friend can be here by Monday, I will train him."


Then thirteen year old Anna talked to the lady who ran their boarding house.  "Do you have any available rooms?" she asked.  There were no rooms available, but Mrs. Waldon's house was recommended three blocks away.


By night fall Anna had secured a job and a room for Roy.  She mailed the news the next morning.


For the next twenty-five years Anna and Roy worked at the citrus plant all week, the strawberry farm on the weekends and the tobacco fields in the summers.   In 1938, after three years of dating, sixteen year old Anna put on her best gray dress and married Roy.  In a tiny chapel, surrounded by the tobacco fields they had met in.  And they lived happily ever after.  At least for the next 70 years.....

feet and faith

I am having a hard time putting down Christopher McDougall's book Born To Run.  Besides the interesting stories of ultra runners,  I was fascinated by his description of the human foot.  At one point he talks about  the "high tensile web of 26 bones, thirty three joints, twelve rubbery tendons and eighteen muscles, all stretching and flexing like an earthquake resistant suspension bridge."  McDougall quotes Leonardo da Vinci who considered the human foot, with its fantastic weight-suspension system comprising one quarter of all the bones in the human body, "a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."  The rest of the book awes you with what our feet are capable of doing.  And in a strange way this helped me get through a long week of hospice.


I am still adjusting to the fact that every week I stare at death with someone whose time is almost up.  Sometimes a history of illness, pain and loss of independence make them eager to go.  Some are fighting it with all they have left.  And almost everyone, in the process of dying, wants to talk about what happens next.  They recite the Bible verses that talk about their heavenly home.  They share their pastor's certainty that they will immediately reunite with grandma and grandpa.  They list their good deeds that will ensure them a promotion in reincarnation.  Or they emphatically tell me "When it's over, it's over."


This week it hit me.  People know what they believe.  They've got the proof and the tradition down. But when they face imminent death, people wonder whether they believe what they believe.  It is one thing to have 10 Bible verse about eternal life in Heaven memorized in your dog eared Bible.  It is another to really believe that you are going to actually be there in your very near future.  Streets of gold and angels sound lovely, but it's hard to feel confident about exchanging your spouse and your favorite pink fleece blanket for them.  Of course grace is amazing.  But after 80 years in a dog-eat-dog word, are you able to really trust that it's sufficient?


This week I stood at enough of these doorways, to join in some wonderings.  I've had too much arrogance kicked out of me to think that my particular tribe has all the answers.  I've learned too much about God from a wide variety of people.  Through journey and questions I have amassed a few beliefs that inspire and make sense to me.  I know what I believe.  But do I really believe what I believe?


That is where the foot comes in.  In those moments where there are more questions than answers, I think about my foot.  I look down at my "masterpieces of engineering and works of art."  Somehow those intricate feet were designed.  A design that lets me jump with my boys, run with my friends and tiptoe to hug my honey. With no help or even comprehension from me, my feet are incredible.  That is calming to me.   Because if Someone put that much thought and skill into my feet, maybe my future will be just as awesome.


Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.  Hebrews 11:1