The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 55 trips to carry that many people.
There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.
Yesterday I talked a little bit about my favourite book in The Chronicles of Narnia and fantasy. Today, I wanted to share more with you about a couple series that really made me the reader that I am today.
I’ve come across several people who credit the Harry Potter series with teaching them a love for reading. As I’ve talked about on here before I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t love books. I was familiar with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe very early in my life. But only that one. We had a VHS copy of an animated version of the story and I spent a lot of time in my childhood watching that movie. Then one Sunday morning at church this little girl sitting next to me had this book called The Magician’s Nephew. The cover looked intriguing to me so I asked her about it. She told me it was like TLTWaTW but from before it. I think this was the first time I heard about there being series of books. It sort of freaked me out. I knew the story-line of Aslan and the four Pevensies so well it threw me that there could be MORE to the story. So I asked my mom about them. It must have been close to Christmas/My Birthday because I received the whole set in a box pretty soon after. And then I read them.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The books used to be in a lot better shape. They’ve seen a lot of wear and tear, especially after Camille reached the appropriate age to start reading them. I’ve read them almost annually since I first got them. I was terribly excited about the live action movie versions (though now quite disillusioned, I’ve tried to develop a better attitude about movie adaptations).
The Chronicles of Narnia were highly formative in my early life. I believe I first read the whole series around the age of nine. Allegory and parables made sense to me from a very early age. It’s something I’ve taken for granted most of my life, and even then I had no idea that I was being introduced to concepts that I shouldn’t have really understood. As a kid, it’s feasible to read TCON as merely a fanciful fairy story… sort of like a fable… oh and then BOOM! Illumination! But I sort of always had that BOOM! Illumination!
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favourite early on because it features such grand adventure and so much creativity. But mainly, it’s the scene with Eustace as a dragon facing Aslan. The Horse and His Boy ranks pretty highly as well. Again it’s the odd scenes where the lion chases Shasta in the desert and then a kitten comforts him. Come to think of it, he gets chased by lions a couple times. I don’t know, they’re just beautiful scenes. I learned a lot about my faith from these stories. I think a lot of my peers have. They’re beautiful and magical and old-timey.
But you don’t have to take my word for it…
In May of 1986 my mom found out she was about six weeks pregnant with me. She didn’t know much about me yet, but she decided to write a poem to me called “Precious”. It went something like this -
Precious
Precious little hands & feet
Growing now inside of me
Little fingers – little toes
My little babyPrecious little nose & eyes
To light your face,
Complete your smilePrecious little voice
To sing praises to our
Heavenly KingPrecious little gift
From God, you’ll
be a special blessingPrecious even now
Unknown – except
by Your creator
She called me precious for most of my life. And she still talks about how much she loves my nose. Oh, moms.
Last October my mom’s birthday was just around the corner and my sister and I decided to try to throw her a surprise birthday party. We hadn’t had a birthday party for her in a few years (shame on us) and she’d never had a surprise party. Circumstances conspired and tried their hardest to prevent this party, too. We had sent out all sort of Facebook invites and made plans with family and friends from church. Close friends of ours let us use their house and all I had to do was make a cake.
However, the weekend of her birthday party she wasn’t feeling well. She’s a school teacher and any teacher’s kid can tell you that on the weekends most teachers seem a little under the weather (it’s a combination of exhaustion and working in basically a petri dish of diseases). But as the weekend progressed she got worse and worse. Finally, Sunday morning (the day of her party) she decided to go to the doctor. Her absence from church was highly unusual and many of our friends kept asking what our plans for the day were. I held out hope we’d still get to have the party. Her birthday is late in November and pretty much once we’ve hit her birthday it’s the downward slope to Christmas and there’s no time for anything. So, I told them we’d wait to see…
Turns out she had extremely high blood pressure and the doctor was shocked she was still capable of moving around. She rested some of the afternoon and Camille and I went off to get things ready under the pretense of a dinner with our friends that Mom and Dad were going to join us for. When the time rolled around for her to leave my mom wasn’t really feeling up to it but my dad convinced her to get in the car. She kept asking him to turn around and take her home but he told her just to hold on. When she walked in the door my young cousins accidentally popped out too early, but mom didn’t really notice. We kept the surprise from being too loud because we didn’t want to give her a heart attack and it took her a moment to realise that everyone was at the house for her. She couldn’t believe we’d pulled it off. I was shocked myself. And really happy she’d made it.
When it came time for gifts I handed her a card with a poem inside. I was proud of the poem. She only got halfway through reading it aloud before she started to cry. When Camille finished the poem there was hardly a dry eye in the room. My oldest sister actually smacked the back of my head for making her cry (a loving gesture for sure).
I thought of these poems when I realized I would be reviewing Amy Tan’s book this week. It’s all about mothers and daughters and the sort of unexpected connections they share. Twenty four years later I wrote a poem to my momma about all the things she’s been to me.
To my mother on her birthday –
A pinkbowl for cakes
Pinecones for counting
Fingers for holding
Laps for sitting
hearts beats for listening
This was my childhoodA guitar for strumming
Discussions at the table and
stories while driving
You watched as I puzzled
things out and taught me Truth
This was the middleAnd now there are more discussions
Plans made and dreames gazed upon
Stories shared when inspiration struck
Music played, songs that moved us,
Movies watched and books read
And You walked alongside me, offered me advice
This is my young adulthoodYou’ve been so many things for me
Playmate, Teacher, Pete,
Friend, Consoler, Guide
and always Momma
Ema Sheli, The mother of me.
Ema Sheli is Hebrew for My mother (at least in the very rudimentary level of Hebrew I know). That’s my momma, ya’ll and there’s so much more to her. And all the frustration and elation of being mother and daughter is hardly capable of being summed up. The day of her birthday party was a particularly unusual day for me. The reality of losing my parents was thrown into sharp relief. I made my parents promise to take care of themselves and each other. We’re far too young for there to be an end, yet. I know that is a slightly morbid set of thoughts. However, I really just wanted to take the opportunity to make a nod to my mom, our unique relationship and celebrate the differences between us and how we’ve grown together the past few years. One thing I found myself thinking a lot during TJLC was you never really know how long you have, so don’t leave anything hanging.
Today is a sad day. It’s a morning for praise music and quietness. I have a whole schedule planned out for the next three weeks of this blog. But life has invaded this week.
Yesterday morning at church a friend handed my dad two of those rubber bracelets. They were meant to serve as a reminder to pray for a member of our church family struggling with very aggressive cancer. Just after he handed the bracelets to us my mom lead the band in the song Fail Us Not by 1000 Generations. These words hit me in the gut every time they sing them. In light of what is happening with our friends the Coles and in our own family this week this song has become something of a safety blanket for me. If you’re the praying kind I know our family and the Cole family would greatly appreciate your prayers.
Fail Us Not
Failure doesn’t phase you.
Worry doesn’t win.
Loss doesn’t leave you afraid to start again.
Our sin doesn’t shock you.
Our shame doesn’t shame you at all.
Mistakes do not move you.
Terror doesn’t tame.
Death doesn’t doom you to life in the grave.
Our suffering doesn’t scare you.
Our secrets won’t surprise you at all.
At all.
There is nothing above you.
There is nothing beyond you.
There is nothing that you can’t do.
There is no one beside you.
There is no one that’s like you.
There is nothing that you can’t do.
Whatever will come, we’ll rise above.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
No matter the war, our hope is secure.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
You fail us not.
Hatred doesn’t hide you.
Evil doesn’t ail.
Despair can’t disguise you and tell you that you fail.
Our doubt doesn’t daunt you.
Our darkness won’t defeat you at all.
At all.
There is nothing above you.
There is nothing beyond you.
There is nothing that you can’t do.
Whatever will come, we’ll rise above.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
No matter the war, our hope is secure.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
Whatever will come, we’ll rise above.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
No, You fail us not.
You fail us not.
You fail us not.
I come by a lot of things honest. Sometimes I think I have absolutely no choice in the matter of my preferences or skills, they just belong to me as a sort of family legacy. For instance, this need to tell stories didn’t just spring into existence with me. It goes back quite a bit.
My grandfather was quite the storyteller. When my mom was little he would tell her as well as her siblings wonderfully fascinating and terrifying stories & parables. These stories survived and were dusted off for use when my cousins and I came around. My younger sister still talks about his (in)famous story of the woman that had a golden leg. I still shudder when I think about that story… It was a great parable to teach us the folly of greed. There were also stories of Percy (a boy which my mother speculates may not have been entirely fictional).
I remember wandering into the various offices he had over the years and being overwhelmed by just how many books he had. We weren’t short of books in my home, but his collection made ours seem small. And he didn’t just use his skills for storytelling on us kids. He was a fantastic orator. A Southern Baptist pastor the likes of which you’d be hard-pressed to come by these days. The man could weave Scripture and a story into such a perfect fabric you’d be blown away.
When I was twelve we made a quick trip up to Alabama to spend a long weekend with my Papa Jere and Nonnie. While we were there I got to hear a couple of Papa’s sermons, too. One of my favourites (I got to hear it at least three times in my life) was called “One More Night with the Frogs”. It was about Pharaoh, Moses, and those world-known plagues. Listening to that message is the first time I remember words painting an image in my mind. I thought of the story that I’d heard as a child paled in comparison to this whole new level of vivacity. Frogs all over the place and Pharaoh putting up with it rather than letting Moses leave with the Israelites. He used an anecdote in this sermon about Percy, too.
The Spring of my senior year of high school Papa Jere died. Since I decided to write this blog I’ve thought over the last trip we made to see him quite a bit. We left Tampa quickly and got to the hospital very late. I was in the room when he died and the week that followed was one of the most bittersweet of my life. We were surrounded by family that we didn’t get to see often, but Papa was gone.
As the adults planned the funeral service there was the suggestion of finding one of Papa’s sermons (all recorded on tapes) and playing it. We put our best effort into making it happen. My uncle knew a man that had a studio in his back yard where we might be able to transfer the old recording. The afternoon before the funeral I listened as Papa Jere’s crackly voice came through the speakers of a homemade studio talking again about Pharaoh’s stubborn insistence to spend just one more night with the frogs. Unfortunately, the quality wasn’t strong enough for us to make a copy. It’s strange to me now that I got to be there when they tried though.
It was over a decade between first hearing that sermon and the first time I really put effort into making a story of my own. I’ve long recognized that storytelling was a family trait, but only recently did these pieces stand out against the others. I wish now that I could share the stories and poems I am making with Papa or get his advice on how to get just the right amount of Hitchcock era creepy.
How to end? With hope. I’m hoping heaven is something a bit like The Great Divorce or The Last Battle and sharing a cup of coffee and a chat with Papa won’t be impossible. Until then I’ll keep telling stories and listening to the family stories and waiting for the day I’ll tell my own children about the woman with the golden leg.
I found this original poem/litany/thing in the archives of my old LiveJournal. Looks like it was written in April of 2007. It doesn’t have a title and is one of my early, flimsy attempts at being poetical.
why so bright a generation
lost in desperation
believing the lies
fed through the lines
that are supposed to connect us
we feel even more alone
purposeless
we’re defenseless
lost in self-pity and self-doubt
scared
is there hope
can we make a difference
if we’re all so stuck on the confusion
no affirmation
no clear direction
rudderless we float
in an abyss void of hope
we struggle and splash
hoping to last
knowing we’ll fade
wishing it wouldn’t go so fast
this life we’re wasting
seconds to minutes and hours fade
the years go by
and we’re left trying to keep the next
generation from failing like we did
futility
what’s it all for anyway?
my head and heart are heavy
crying out over the despair i read of in so many of my friends lives
i’m there, too.
failing, kicking and screaming in a silent facade
john, i don’t know where the bottom is, but i feel, like you, that i’m determined to reach it
sarah, i don’t know hwo i ended up waiting on things to make sense either, and now i’m scared i’ve screwed everything up
chels, your pain wrenches my soul, i wish i could heal it, but i know i can’t
sometimes i think healing and hope are the lie
my words are jammed up
i’ve forgotten how to praise, to be more than a conquerer
i want to stop being a shell of myself
and i wish the same for you
I am currently on a bus heading north on I-75.
I’ve been writing my blog posts in advance in effort to develop the habit of regularly posting. So I’m actually writing this two minutes into Monday morning.
I’m on a bus with about 56 middle-school and high-school girls. It’s been a few years since this was my job and it’s a bit weird for me. So many things are the same. And so many are different.
Some of you know that for several years my career trajectory was aimed toward becoming a youth pastor. I worked on a student ministry staff in South Tampa for three years. I learned so much, developed a bunch of weird insecurities, met and experience so many wonderful people and events. I saw lives changed and healing started. They were a good three years.
Then my plot-line changed a little. Then it changed a lot. And I got a little confused about my role, my story.
But this is all old hat stuff. I mean I’ve told this story before. I’m sorry. I’ve just gotten a little nostalgic. Here I am on a bus with several girls who were on my very first student ministry trip. They’re in the midst of their last summer as high-schoolers. I’m lamenting the fact that we’re all six years older and I can’t quite wrap my mind around it.
I’ve come face to face with part of my living history. It’s a bit like those people that walk around the fairgrounds in period dress and remind you of “the way it was”.
I like where my story is now. But it’s interesting for 24 year old me to run a parallel path with 19 year old me. I wonder how many more times in my life I’ll sort of be here again?
