Dancing on the Green

It wasn't entirely spontaneous, as family gatherings go. 

Once every couple of months, my older sister visits the parents: Dad in the family home and Mom in nearby assisted living. My sister holds the financial power of attorney, a role for which she is eminently suited. 

My younger sister, her husband, and one of their teen daughters were up from northwest Georgia, visiting his parents and ours. 

And the dance band for which Dad is a vocalist had a gig, performing on a Friday evening at the band shell on the green in a planned-village community not far from where Mom and Dad are.

The plan was for both sisters to attend the concert on the green, together with the niece, her in-laws,  and my mother. When I learned of this plan, I wanted in, and said so. As we all began to gather on the green, we learned that Mom was just not feeling well enough to attend and sent her regrets, and so the rest of us, a bit wistful, gathered anyway.  

Over the course of the two-hour performance, with the weather beautifully cooperative, we enjoyed the band, the singing, and the crowd. Some of Dad's exercise buddies from the YMCA came, including Patty, exuberantly dancing to the music. At one point, I slipped off the green to the sidewalk and stretched my legs. Coming back in at a side gate, I passed a man with a service dog, and we had a nice little visit.  

And small children, as they do, danced, ran, cartwheeled, chased one another. With complete freedom. My sisters and I commented to each other: Reminds us of us, once upon a time.

It's a lonely and vulnerable space, sometimes, when one of a couple is in assisted living and one is still in the longtime home. As we gradually returned to our own homes the following day, after tender and vital time together, Dad reflected. 

Saturday evening, maybe 24 hours after the family gathered on the green, we received an email from Dad. He spoke of how the love "bathed" Mom, "dementia notwithstanding," All of us will keep all these things, pondering them in [our hearts], in a paraphrase of the Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 2, verse 19. 

Here, beloveds, is God. Love is a circle of energy, endlessly flowing, self-regenerating, drawing its power from the joined hands and the presence of one another. Keep all these things. Ponder them in your heart. Be present with God, whatever God looks like in the moment.

The Mango Tango

(Or, the mango salsa, if preferred.)

Peeling a mango over the sink yesterday morning, which is just about the only way to wrestle with that tropical fruit. I called on my tips and tricks for separating the skin and then getting to the fruit itself and separating it from the pit. (And don't we all pray to be separated from the Pit?)

The mango was perfectly ripe and a joy to eat. It reminded me, as mangoes always do, of my childhood. Our family lived in South Florida until the late 1970s. It is, of course, tropical. It was there that I came into the knowledge of the varieties of palm trees; to enjoy the lush extravagance of hibiscus; to count lizards and frogs as fun adventure. 

Our yard included not only hibiscus but also an olive tree (sadly, infertile), a cherry tree (yum), and a grapefruit tree. A gift from family friends, it did poorly until my parents moved it so that it was in another part of the back yard, near the green utility box, where it thrived. (Go figure.) I grew up thinking that everyone just plucked grapefruits and brought them into the kitchen for Mom to slice and section for breakfast. Our backyard neighbor had a Key lime tree. 

And family friends had a mango tree. Their daughter, who was a year or two older than I was, took an Italian ancestral name for her surname and went into ballet, her passion. I still have the leather bookmark that was a gift from the family's vacation to Italy. 

One evening, our family was visiting their home, mango tree and all. I developed a headache and nausea. Might have been coming down with something; maybe it was just really warm that evening. I was eight or so and don't remember the details. I do remember deciding that it must have been an allergy to mango. 

The association was so strong that for decades, I passed on mango, citing an allergy. One morning a couple of years ago, in a rush but still wanting to make healthy choices, I picked up a cup of mixed fruit from a coffee shop. Unidentified orange chunks were ... not pineapple ... aha. Mango. The piney fibrous flavor was a treat.

At the time, I shared an office with a woman whose husband was from Mexico. She had plenty of knowledge and advice about mangoes. They've been part of my diet ever since.

The world, dear ones, is as small as you and I choose to make it. As Carl Sagan writes at the close of his novel Contact, "For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."*


Enjoy the mangoes, in season, at the peak of ripeness. Enjoy the adventure of getting to the sweet fibrous treasure within.

You Call Me Pastor Tibbs*

*With gratitude to Sidney Poitier in The Blackboard Jungle who, at the end of his metaphorical rope, roared at his students: "You call me Mister Tibbs." 

While rinsing out the yogurt containers this morning, I was reflecting on the eternal insistence on being addressed as Pastor. What prompted this reflection was a Facebook post from a clerical colleague, now in another part of the country. We were both in our first pastoral calls about the same time in the same city. (As well as discussion with a pastoral text study group in which I am often the only woman at the table, and my own memories of why I let congregants know that "Pastor" is what to call me.)

This good man is almost a generation younger than I am, maybe 15 years. He posted with sharp and vivid language expressing both sympathy for colleagues who are women and a calling to account among colleagues who are men.

He'd shared something that another person had posted about what I'll call casual misogyny.

My comment to my colleague on this post was simple. "All. The. Time."

At a recent gathering of my denomination in my state, the assembly watched a video. I'd seen it before. It showed pastors who are men reading and responding on camera to a collection of statements and questions that pastors who are women have heard. The statements are recent, not dated. Recent, as in, some within the last year. See the video here.

The NC Conference of the United Methodist Church has a similar video on Vimeo, although I am unable at the moment to find a working link.

I am diminished when my colleagues who are men tell those they serve, "Call me Firstname." I am diminished when my colleagues who are women do the same. I am not a person of color. I am not a gender other than the one with which I was born. I remain profoundly grateful for colleagues such as my friend in another part of the country who advocate, who raise their voices, from their positions as pastors who are cis-gender* white males, for pastors who are women. 

What happens when you and I ask a person how she or he would like to be addressed? What happens when you and I ask a person, "What are your pronouns?" Does it diminish me? If it diminishes you, what about it is diminutive to you? 

*cis-gender, or cisgender: The gender at birth is the gender with which you identify.

All the Lynns

It started with love, as it so often does.

On Friday evening, the hubs and I drove the hour or so east, from our fair city to the town where my parents abide. Mom is in assisted living, Dad ten minutes away in their home. The visit had been planned just after Easter, tickets purchased, an outing to enjoy AAA minor-league baseball with the Durham Bulls.

The enjoyment of baseball is nurturally genetic. I trace my lineage from my dad, who inherited it from his mom, who inherited it from her dad. On the hubs' side, M. played the game through high school, and his mom was a devoted fan. 

The local team in our fair city is single-A minor-league ball, which we have been enjoying together for more than 25 years. What a treat to see triple-A ball. It was at the old Durham Athletic Park (pre-Bull Durham) that I saw my first live baseball games, with Dad, on the rattly bleachers with the occasional nearby whiffs of cigar smoke.

I asked a couple of people to take a picture of the three of us at the ball game in the new Durham Athletic Park, very nice place, once in the lull between batting practice and the game and once in the lull during a pitching change. Posted them on Facebook and tagged M. and Dad.

Several nice comments and a number of Facebook likes and loves. Out of curiosity, I asked my dad about the names I didn't recognize of the people who liked and loved the pictures. Two of them were named Lynn.

One was my dad's cousin, now living about an hour and a half east of me. My cousin too. Let's see. If her mom was my great-aunt, that makes Lynn... carry the six... my cousin. Family, at any rate.

The other person named Lynn was in the Miami Herald newsroom with my dad before moving to a university job. Both the Lynns accepted my friend request on Facebook. Normally I don't accept friend requests from someone I scarcely know - but the photo and caption showed pretty clearly that I was my dad's daughter, so they accepted my request right away.

Lynn-of-the-Miami-Herald was kind enough to send a message remembering me as an "adorable" child running around the newsroom (on the occasional Saturday, I think). Now I have a new friend and a newly discovered cousin, because we went to the ball game, because my dad and hubs and I love the game of baseball, because we always have.

Behold the connections. To walk in the Jesus way means, for me, that love is mutually nourishing. To live as though all relationships have the potential to be mutually nourishing means that our hearts are open to the threads, the networks, that bind us all, whether that network is Facebook, baseball, women named Lynn, or all of the above.

Roll Out the Barrel, Dear

It was a game show that began on radio. The host of You Bet Your Life was Groucho Marx, an entertainer who died on August 19, 1977. Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was born in 1890 to European immigrants, Sam "Frenchie" Marx of the Alsace region of France, and Miene "Minnie" Schoenberg, whose family traveled to the New World from Dornum, northern Germany, when Minnie was 16.*

Why do I care about the game show whose heyday was in the 1950s and that went off the air before I was born? Because of the recent results of another game show that is still on the air.

James Holzhauer, a professional gambler who lives in Nevada, was selected as a contestant on Jeopardy!, a game show that is a family favorite in the household in which I grew up. His first appearance was on April 4, 2019. Holzhauer was born to a German-immigrant father. One of his grandmothers was Japanese and spoke very little English. He had promised her that he would appear on Jeopardy! before she died. She died before his appearance.**

He performed on Jeopardy! for his 33 appearances in a very different way from previous contestants. He performed, in truth, as a professional sports gambler, which is his job. He is married, and they have a daughter, who is 5. He has donated a percentage of his winnings to children's charities in Las Vegas.

So what are all the connections? Too numerous to mention here. Jeopardy! has been on the air for three years longer than I have been alive, beginning about when Groucho's program was ending. I have twice passed the auditions, both written and with the buzzers, but have not been on the show.

You Bet Your Life was mostly in the top twenty in ratings during its tenure. Meanwhile, Jeopardy! endures. The contestant who ended James Holzhauer's 33-game appearance on Jeopardy! was named Emma Boettcher. The name, a German one, is often pronounced Bet-cher. As in, You Bet Your Life. 

The certified nurse-midwife who helped guide our firstborn into the world, in Dallas, Texas, was named Cherie Boettcher. Cherie, of course, being a French term of endearment meaning "dear." French being the ancestry of Groucho Marx's father. And Boettcher, a German occupational name for a cooper, a barrel-maker. From the Middle High German, a derivation of butte, meaning "barrel."*** Cherie founded the Birth & Women's Center in 1993. That child of ours was born on August 17, 1994 - ten days late and two days shy of being born on the date that Groucho died, but born instead on his dad's birthday. Unable to negotiate purchase of the house, Cherie had to close the BWC in 2018.

Learning that a librarian named Emma Boettcher was the winner on what turned out to be James Holzhauer's final appearance on Jeopardy! has prompted not only thoughts about heritage, and the strong threads that bind family members one to another, but also vivid memories. Our lives are so enriched, and our ties with God are so strengthened, when you and I are open channels for relationships; connections; love.

* From the Wikipedia entry, "Groucho Marx."
** From the Wikipedia entry, "James Holzhauer" and a footnote that sourced an article on Heavy online. 
***Surname derivation information from Ancestry.com

Where the Gospel Is

One of the questions I sometimes ask when wrestling with a sermon is: Where is the good news? The good news, as in the gospel. The word comes to us from Old Saxon via Old Norse - the Germanic languages - beginning as "good spell," or good story or good message. It's a translation of the Latin bona adnuntiatio, which itself is a translation of the Greek eu- + -angelion, bringing the good news.


At first, in Old English, it was pronounced goad-spell. By the 13th century, it had shifted to god-spell by association with God as if the history of Jesus was the "god-story." The Oxford English Dictionary terms the mistake "very natural." 

Sometimes, I ask Where is the good news when I'm not wrestling with a sermon. At all.

I was not overly alarmed, though I was dismayed, to learn that my mom, who dwells in assisted living, had gone to the bathroom at 4 a.m. and failed to transfer back to her wheelchair successfully. She had had a fall. That was on a Sunday morning. By Monday evening, she had had two more falls, and she was borne to the emergency department of the local teaching hospital. My dad was the messenger; my older sister supplied us with updates, sharing the news of her conversations with our dad. All these messengers, all this news ... where is the good news?

It is everywhere, as it turns out, when we are able to see it.

The bladder infection, while not good news, explains why my mother had had three falls in some 40 hours. The broken fibula, a lower-leg bone, from the second fall, was in her "dead" leg, a leg that poliomyelitis withered in 1949. The broken bone is not good news - but of her two legs, this was the less bad option.

There is more good news. Where my parents live, the university medical center is the local hospital. The medical care is world class. This is the United States, where health care is costly, but my parents are retired state employees with pensions, Medicare, and the long-ago foresight to have invested in long-term-care insurance.

More good news. My mother had received physical therapy to help with her ability to stand from her wheelchair and transfer to a seat. When she returns from the hospital, she will receive another round of physical therapy - and her muscles will have retained some of the first round of therapy. It can be expected that she will be stronger and more able to transfer herself when needed.

Still more good news: Mom has been refusing to wear a necklace with a help button on it, the kind that would alert staff to the need for instant assistance. Once she is back in her room, staff and physicians and social worker will quite likely be able to insist that wearing the necklace is now required. My mother, accepting of rules and ever the good student, might begin to wear the necklace.

Of course my dad is worn out with loving concern, with the inability to carry for a loved one all the pain and fear and stress, and with the myriad small daily tasks that accompany having a spouse in the hospital, with the grueling exhaustion of eight-hour waits followed by more waiting, with the "quotidian mysteries," as Kathleen Norris terms it, of laundry and groceries. Where is the good news in that?

Our close and communicative family cannot take the burden from Dad's shoulders. We cannot completely carry out the advice of Galatians 6:2, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (NRSV). But it turns out, etymologically, that to bear is where we get the language of child-bearing. That child-bearing is, of course, ideally a communal shared experience. Only one person actually carries the child. So, in a real sense, we can help to bear the burdens. So does bearing a child become the holy work of community. So does bearing one another's burdens.

A whole community, a network of strong wise women, of girls who are being shown, of men who love and walk alongside, of the religious community (religion sharing a root with ligament). I am reminded powerfully of Anne Lamott's reflections in Traveling Mercies about how when, unmarried, she chose to carry and bear her child, it was the small scrappy church community into which she had reluctantly been drawn (by the music, she says) who took loving possession of the baby, who pressed sandwich bags of dimes into her pockets, who playfully argued over whose turn it was to hold the baby on Sunday mornings. Sometimes she went to church, with the baby, because everyone else was wanting to love them.

I draw great strength, and pray that my worn-out dad does too, from the way the family network activated, automatically, upon receiving the bad news of a fall ... then a second ... then a third.

There have been times in my life that I have felt overwhelmed and numb, as though half my head had no feeling in it. One occasion about a decade ago came when, in divinity school, I returned from a weekend of my firstborn in confirmation class at a mountain retreat, during which I stayed at the home of a friend and wrote a paper for a seminar on the Gospel of Matthew. Cell-phone an email service was scrappy and I was not doing much looking, at any rate.

I returned home with the boy on a Sunday evening, checked my email, and learned that my mom and dad had been on a weekend jaunt, during which my mom had contracted Bell's palsy, a facial hemiplegia (paralysis of one side of the face). I also learned by email that my cousin serving in Afghanistan had lost both legs below the knee to an improvised explosive device.

First thing once I got on campus the next morning, I sent a group email to the divinity school class and faculty, asking for prayer. Then I went to the seminar class and turned in the paper. A couple of hours later, when I checked my email, there were almost 40 messages of prayer, love, and support. More poured in. I was held up.

Over and over again, when I am emotionally paralyzed, when I don't even have the wherewithal to fall back into the hammock, the love and support of community, of family however I define it, rises up to me where I am. When the news is horrible, I have only to croak, "Help," and it is there. This network, these ligaments, this community, is my necklace with the button on it.

I press it, and help arrives, the help that I have been barely able to summon. Even when I am too worn, too weary, too numb, too paralyzed, too everything.

This is God. This is the relationships. See, look, behold how God is relationship. Here, in the weariness, here in the dark, here in the groceries and laundry and hospital parking, and what-ifs, here is God. Behold the good news.

The Babe, Yogi, death, and life

What started with a dog has ended with a grave. So to speak.

In 1993, my betrothed and I were attending single-A minor-league baseball games in the city's aging and well-beloved stadium. My favorite player was the handsome first baseman, Nick Delvecchio, a contemporary in the farm system with a shortstop named Derek Jeter. That was when the local team was a Yankees franchise. We've been attending the city's minor-league games ever since. 

In 2006, when the Miami Marlins owned the club, the local team's owner introduced a black Labrador retriever, Miss Babe Ruth, to bring bats back to the clubhouse and take a little bucket of fresh baseballs to the umpire. Since its inception, minor-league professional baseball has been about lively entertainment beyond the match itself. Miss Babe Ruth was the first minor-league bat dog, though far from the last; it now is common among single-A minor league teams. 

The local ball club's owner and management, and the city, all thought that the team would continue to re-sign three-year contracts with the Miami Marlins for as long as they both would live. The divorce was unexpected, fast, and ugly.*

Miss Babe Ruth had received a diagnosis of cancer in early 2018 and died that May. Master Yogi Berra, Miss Ruth's relative, who had been serving alongside her, died not long afterward. Miss Babe Ruth's baseball bucket is now in Cooperstown, NY, in the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

In the team's clubhouse, as a memorial, two small clean dog cages are tucked into a corner. 

It seems that in the off season, when the local team and the Marlins (owner: Derek Jeter), were getting ready to re-sign a three-year contract, a Marlins vice president - Gary Denbo - made a snap visit. He saw the cages and criticized the clubhouse manager for having dog cages in a clubhouse. (And a couple of other issues - laundry room, soft-drink machine.)The local team is now a franchise of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It has Miss Lou Lou Gehrig, Miss Ruth's niece, and is hopeful that Little Jackie Robinson will develop. It's all about relationships. Jeter, taking the high road, is loyal to Denbo. The local team, also taking the high road, waited nearly a year to allow the story to come out, which it did when this season began.

Jeter has long and publicly claimed a soft spot for our fair city. Between 1992, when he could hit, and 1993, when he also could field, he worked extensively on fielding. Ours is the city where he became Derek Jeter, at least in utero. Miami is very nearly my childhood home, as I grew up in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. Our fair city, Greensboro, NC, has been my rooted home for 28 years.

The hubs grew up in east-central North Carolina but was seven years old in 1962 (five years before my birth). He discovered Mickey Mantle and has been a fan of the Mick and the Yankees ever since. I grew up loving baseball because of my dad (who inherited it from his mother), who grew up in Baltimore, where his family was dynastic fans of the Orioles, who were in the AAA international league until Branch Rickey moved the "hapless" St. Louis Browns to Baltimore, where the Orioles are currently hapless. (Since 1986, beginning with sympathy and assisted by a claim of relatives in New England, I have allegiance to the Boston Red Sox.)

Branch Rickey invented the farm system. A Methodist and a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan College, he also, with cool strategic deliberation, had the Montreal Royals (farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers) sign Jack Roosevelt Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. It would take eight seasons from when Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers themselves to when the hapless Dodgers ("Dem Bums") would win the World Series.

Baseball fans in our fair city, the single-A team management, and all - are grieved at the severance of the relationship with Jeter and the Marlins. We now claim allegiance to Pittsburgh, a storied franchise with its share of player-clowns, some of my own baseball memories, and all. The team still has black Labs retrieving bats and bringing out buckets of baseballs. Baseball, and lif, continues after even a sudden, painful, and violent death.

The death of team dogs, and the death of a professional marriage, is a different kind of painful from the death of one's own dog (we have walked through that) or the death of one's own marriage (not today, thank you). But death, life, and resurrection are still death, life, and resurrection.

We've been to a few games this season. We delight in the bat dogs. And the hot dogs have improved, at least recently. The local team has some real talent, whom we are excited to watch.

"The thief comes only to kill and steal and destroy. I came that they might have life," Jesus said, "and have it abundantly." (John 10:10, NRSV). Where is the theft, the killing, the stealing, and the destruction in my life and in yours? And where is the life, and where is it abundant?

*Credit goes to Jeff Mills, columnist for the News & Record of Greensboro, NC, for his coverage of the divorce between the local team and the MLB franchise.

Credit also goes to the hubs for his recollections of Jeter and our fair city.

Cosmos Mariner

Sam Scoville has died. Chances are excellent that you have no idea who that is. But Sam having been on this earth and having lived his vocation is fundamental to me and the living of my vocation.

In 1985, as a first-year student at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC, I elected a freshman course that assigned me Sam as my adviser. In the 1980s, at Warren Wilson, 95 percent of the students and 90 percent of the faculty lived on the campus, most of the latter in homes along the rolling green hills of the many-acre property. It was a community as well as an accredited four-year school with an excellent reputation and impressive faculty and staff. (No football team, however.)

All of which is to say, I never called him Dr. Scoville in my life. Still don't. The point, though, is Sam. Sam was very ... zen-ish as an adviser. I'd be sitting in that plastic-scoop chair, and he'd have his long lean New England frame folded, sort of, into his swivel-reclining chair, or gazing out his office window while we talked. Should I take this course or that one, Sam? Sam would unleash his slow Atticus Finch grin. What do you think you should do? Sam kept me mostly on track during the four years of which my know-it-all smarty-pants self had an ongoing prickly relationship with another English-department major. It was some years before I was able to acknowledge that the prickles were mostly on my side and the unhappy episode in my final semester was also my responsibility. 

Of course, Sam was the good-natured, economical of speech, unconcerned of future adviser. He was also a direct descendant of Lyman Beecher, thus Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was a graduate of Yale; his doctoral dissertation from Duke was on an aspect of Nathaniel Hawthorne (to whom, who knows, he might also have been related). He had served for a time as the dean at Warren Wilson. 

During his office hours, our conversation would often veer into matters of religion, as I explored the paths of belief. He respected the explorations I was making, showed interest, and kept his own Presbyterian counsel. After I graduated, we kept in touch, mostly on Facebook. A couple of times, when I was in the area, we visited. 

The last occasion was two years ago. As a gift for my 50th birthday, my husband and I had booked a weekend at an Airbnb - we were looking for the Asheville area, and one we liked turned out to be in Swannanoa. Ooh! Ooh! Yes, we booked it and it was lovely. It was really the first occasion in then-24 years of marriage for us to be on indisputably my turf. 

Having got in touch with Sam, I arranged that we would see him on a mid-morning in his office. He was then Sam-zenning his way into retirement at the end of that term, being increasingly crippled by arthritis. He was, however, his usual self, slow of speech, gently pleased by our marital happiness and impressed that I was now a Lutheran pastor. Before we left, he looked to his bookshelves and gave me a large book bound in soft leather, a daily-prayer book with ribbon markers for a season of the year. (Presbyterian, of course.) He inscribed it to me. 

He had "watched my career with great interest."* As in, "I know my own, and my own know me" (John 10:14b, NRSV). As do all good teachers, those for whom teaching is a vocation. 

My dad, now retired, was one such college professor, of the craft and art of journalism. Now in his eighties, if you say the name of a former student, his face lights up. He has watched their careers with great interest. He knows his own, and his own know him. 

How did I come to know Warren Wilson College? At the time, our family were members of a Presbyterian church in our town. Another member was then the dean of the school of journalism at a time when my dad, unhappy in a job he held for a year or so, was looking for a change. This church member had a son who had graduated from Warren Wilson before going on to what would become an impressive vocation in, I think, marine biology. He mentioned the place to my dad, who mentioned it to me.

My baptism at age four months was into the Presbyterian church. We mostly attended United Methodist congregations until, while I was in college, my parents returned to the United Church of Christ (my mother had been brought up a Congregationalist in New England).

Do you see how relational this all is? Do you see how each of us is bound to the other? Go and see, go and tell, go and invite. Maybe the good Presbyterians in the house would say that it all was foreordained. (Shout-out to John Calvin!)

Conrad Aiken, poet, lived from 1889 to 1973. Born and brought up in Savannah, Ga., he also has a bench in the cemetery there that serves as his grave marker. It reads, "Conrad Aiken/Cosmos Mariner."

As a coastal Georgian, he enjoyed reading the shipping news in the newspaper. It nursed his wanderlust. He is said to have seen in the list one day, either of ships going out from the port or ships coming into port, a ship with that name. Locals say that that is when he decided to have such an identity as his marker.**

Godspeed to you, Sam, cosmos mariner.

*A line from Palpatine to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
**Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. New York: Random House, 1994. By John Berendt.