Orientation: Joyful
I’ll never forget Don processing down the center aisle that Third Sunday of Advent as we sang the opening hymn. He walked unsteadily, his face gaunt. As he reached the front of the sanctuary, his back to the congregation, his face toward where I stood on the chancel, the flame of the candlelighter he held before him bathed his jaundiced face in a soft glow. I remember the look on his face – a peace that passes understanding; a radiant, intrepid joy.
Queen of the Pumpkin Pie
One of my nieces made a crown out of a napkin and we concocted a coronation ceremony. I played a make-believe trumpet fanfare as one of my girls walked behind Rose and placed the napkin crown on her head.
I intoned, “We crown thee Her Majesty Rose. Queen of the Pumpkin Pie.” Whereupon not just our table, but the folks within ear and eyeshot of our table applauded.
“Bad Sausage”
A wise elder in the Lexington, KY, church I served from 2014-2022 had held nearly every position a lay member could. He’d seen it all – the church and its people in all their glory and gory from the inside out. One day, musing over an incident when something went sideways at meeting and someone threw up their hands in exasperation, Josh folded his hands, placed them on his chest, calmly shook his head, and opined, “If you work where the sausage is made, sometimes it can make you sick to your stomach.”
Amanda and Alice: Spiritual Directors
Who would’ve known that there were two venues for life-changing spiritual direction leasing space in that North Phoenix strip mall all those years? God knows I needed the help God’s servant Amanda provided to keep me on track every bit as much as those teens need Alice Cooper’s benevolent tutelage. Left to our own devices, those teens and I are – what are the words? – at risk.
Hope on Four Legs
For the last weeks of her life, Mom lived with my sister and her husband. When Hospice was called, they brought a bed and set it up in the living room. And next to the bed was placed the set of stairs that Hope could ascend so as to lie next to my mother.
Mom’s other constant companion in those final weeks was her four-year-old great-grandson, Elijah. It was not lost on me that Mom’s dearest companions in her final days were a boy whose name means “The Lord is God” and a dog named Hope.