Ava

A Francis Experience

Context: October 4 is set aside as the Feast of St. Francis. It’s a day I celebrate by both remembering him and by trying to be outside and honor the environment and creatures he so loved. The image at the top of the page is from artist Sue Betanzos, who creates art for people who love animals and nature, and whose portrayals of St. Francis, I rather dig. At this week’s healing service at Christ Church Easton, I gave a short homily on Francis, the text of which is below.

“A Francis Experience”

I first experienced God outside, in Creation. And that is still where I experience God’s presence most frequently. So when I first came across St. Francis of Assisi years ago, in context of being the patron saint of the environment and of animals, I was drawn to him.

If you dig into his life and teachings, Francis (1181/82 – 1226) is fascinating. He was the son of a wealthy merchant and he lived it up until he was taken prisoner in battle and held captive for a year. Following his release, he was sick for a year and during that time he had dreams and visions that caused him to transform his life. He was in his early 20s when this happened. And he proceeded to live a life most of us couldn’t handle or live up to. He embraced and marveled in all of God’s creation.

We hear stories and picture Francis preaching to animals and wandering around in fields taking in and basking in God’s love. But that misses so much of who he was. People who lived at the same time he did said Francis lived out the Sermon on the Mount better than anyone besides Jesus. Taken that a step further, it is St. Francis who many hold up as the human being who most fully lived out what it is to live a life of Christ-like love.

The current Pope adopted the name Francis after St. Francis, and there is an order of Franciscan friars or monks, among whom Richard Rohr—who is one of my go-to theologians and writers—is one of the most widely published public figures. About Francis, Rohr says:

“The truth of Francis’ respect for animals is far more profound than mere “birdbath Franciscanism” lets on. Everything was a mirror for Francis. What he saw in the natural world, in the sky, in animals, and even plants was a reflection of God’s glory. His first biographer, Thomas of Celano, writes about how Francis was constantly praising creatures for giving God glory just by their very existence. They could simply be and be themselves. Eventually, nature mirrored back the same message to Francis himself: He could just be and be himself in all of his freedom and joy and poverty.”

In my experience, teenagers don’t often get excited about things that their parents get excited about. This past Saturday, Holly and I were sitting on the deck, in a wonderful light breeze, reading and watching and listening to birds at the feeders in the back yard. My 19-year-old daughter Ava came out to join us. She knows how I get worked up over sunrises and sunsets and birds.

We sat outside having a wonderful conversation and laughing. And using the Merlin Bird App Sound ID, we were hearing a new-to-us bird, an American Redstart, a migratory warbler, that are coming through the area in big numbers right now. The adult males are black and orange similar to a Baltimore Oriole (the bird, not the baseball team). We started seeing two small gray and yellow birds and Ava became fascinated by them, and was able to spot them everywhere they went around the yard—she was totally absorbed and dialed-in to their presence. It was like watching a little kid follow a butterfly around. Turns out they were immature and/or female Redstarts, which is how most of them look in the fall.

Photos are from the Merlin Bird App from Cornell Lab.

It was the simplest, most incredible afternoon and Holly and I looked at each other and said, “This is the very best stuff.”

One more story. Seventeen years ago a friend and I decided we wanted to run an ultramarathon, a race longer than a marathon, and we picked a 34-mile trail race around Holiday Lake in Appomattox, Virginia. The race was directed by a guy who once held the records for fastest hikes of the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.

It was early February. It was 14 degrees and the race started in the dark, a few hundred of us running through the woods on singletrack trails with headlamps. It’s hilly, and beautiful, and we’re winding along next to the frozen lake.

As the sun comes up, there is fog lifting off the lake and this crazy, loud sound, which sounds just like whales communicating back and forth, is echoing through the woods. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s the ice beginning to melt and cracking and shifting the length of the lake.

We move just away from the lake, into an opening field and meadow, the sun is moving into the sky and reflecting off frost all over the trees and ground. The group of us running together have never met, don’t know each other at all, and as we are all taking this scene in, in awe and wonder, a woman says, “This is why I do this.” And that begins a conversation with a handful of us, new friendships over the next several miles.

Backyard birding with Ava and running around the lake in the winter, these are what I call having a Francis Experience. I can describe so many of them, with new ones each week. I wonder if you have had your own Francis experiences, outside, in Creation, where you felt love and connection in a simple and deep way.

When we remember St. Francis in our prayer book, it is with the prayer that is attributed to him, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let us so love” and so on.

Today, I will leave you with some of Francis’s words you may not have heard, an excerpt from his “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon,” which give you a sense of how he looked at and revered God, Creation, and everything and everyone therein:

“Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.”

This Feast of St. Francis, today and every day, may we have, may we cultivate, and may we share our Francis Experiences.

Believe

Lead in: I am in my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. April 15-16, with a last minute switch, was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for April 16 was John 20:19-31, which most people know for “Doubting Thomas,” the disciple who won’t believe that Jesus has been resurrected until he touches Jesus’s wounds for himself. We are all a bit like Thomas. The reading is where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his death.

“Do Not Doubt, But Believe”

I’m a big fan of John’s Gospel. On the one hand, he’s a bit like the Rodney Dangerfield of the gospels—not enough respect to get his own lectionary year like the synoptic Gospels; on the other hand, every lectionary year is made better because we have John peppered throughout them.

For John, “believing” is a big deal. He uses the word “believe” 98 times in his Gospel, always as a verb, as something active and dynamic. He tells us at the end of today’s reading that these stories are written that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah and through believing have life in his name.

Today’s reading is John’s version of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Remember, John didn’t write Acts, that was Luke, so we don’t get the Pentecost telling of the story here.

There are scholars who say that John’s Gospel is the one most likely to have originated with an eyewitness account. We read the author describing himself as being there at the crucifixion and later, on the beach with Peter and the others. There are details in John that we don’t find in the others.

Let’s look at two stories of the giving of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, he says that after investigating everything he wants to write an orderly account of all that went on, talking to everyone he can. Each Gospel sets out its witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, and I love Luke (he gives us the prodigal son, the Road to Emmaus, etc). But when I think humorously about the way stories get passed down over time, there is some part of me that thinks about Luke asking everyone for their recollection of Pentecost:

“And there was FIRE! Fire? Yeah, FIRE! It was intense! And then people were speaking in tongues, remember that? And people thought we were drunk, and Peter was like, noooo waaaayy, it’s only 9:00 in the morning…”

In Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, it is a public event, a spectacle.

In contrast, listen to John’s account:

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

Maybe it’s because I tend prefer being understated, but I love the simple, straightforward, intimate and understated way John gives us the Holy Spirit. No crowds, no fire, no speaking in tongues. Jesus breathed on them and gave them a new Spirit. A new life in Him. A life that has overcome death.

Does that sound familiar? This is from Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7:

“then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

I love that John sees what Jesus is doing and connects it back to the beginning (remember he starts his whole Gospel account with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) John wants to make sure we don’t miss what’s happening. This is new life, that comes through Jesus, which is giving us a direct connection to God.

I get excited about the Holy Spirit.

But let’s backtrack to where the disciples are in the reading and what’s going on.

Jesus has been arrested, crucified, and was buried in a tomb. The disciples scattered, afraid for their lives. Just before today’s reading, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, she ran and got Peter and the one whom Jesus loved (who we think of as John, the author) and they went in and found the tomb empty. And then the men left and went home. All Peter and John saw was the empty tomb.

Mary Magdalene stuck around, talked to angels, then encountered Jesus, who told her to go and tell the disciples, which she did. But none of them have seen Jesus for themselves yet. They might dismiss her story as being unbelievable story, saying she was overly excited at finding the tomb empty—she could have been hallucinating.

Now, they were hiding out together in a locked room, hoping not to be found or found out. As writer and pastor Frederick Buechner describes it:

“They had bolted the door and were listening for the dreaded sound of footsteps on the stair when suddenly Jesus was among them. He stood in their midst—always in their midst, this man, turning up when they least expected him—and told them to breathe his breath, his holy breath and spirit, so that they could go out into the world again and perform his holy work.”

6th century mosaic in the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

Knowing that they are going to be scared out of their wits, Jesus’s first words to them are “Peace be with you.”

He reassures them. He shows them his hands and his side, so that they know it’s him and that this is real. And the disciples rejoiced. Of course they did. If there are scenes out of Scripture that you would want to be there for—this has to be one of them! This is massive. It’s transformative. It’s life changing. It’s death conquering.

Jesus gives the disciples what they need to believe. And then he gives them his Spirit and gives them work to do.

But Thomas isn’t there. The other disciples tell him what happened, but he isn’t having it. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

On the one hand, we can say, sure, everyone talks a big game when Jesus isn’t standing there, just you wait… But I think this is true to life. How many of us, when hearing friends tell us an unbelievable story, decide, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Even if it comes from people we trust, we still want proof. Thomas wants the same experience the others had.

So what does Jesus do? He comes back. He shows up again, just for Thomas. He gives Thomas what he needs to believe. Jesus doesn’t scold him, he is there for him and tells Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.”

Notice, Thomas doesn’t get kicked out of the club for doubting. That is one of the wonderful aspects of this reading—there is room in our faith for doubt. It is okay to want to see for ourselves. It’s okay not to believe just because everyone else tells you to. Jesus works with Thomas.

And Thomas believes; seeing is believing as they say. Jesus then delivers the showstopper of lines, a line so important to faith: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That’s us. I don’t know about you—I haven’t encountered the bodily resurrected Jesus in the flesh. But I have come to believe. How?

Think of the work Jesus is asking the disciples to take on. To help people believe, when they haven’t seen him for themselves.

Here is Frederick Buechner again:

“The risen Christ is risen in his glory, but he is also Christ risen in the hearts of those, who although they have never touched the mark of the nails, have been themselves so touched by him, that they believe anyway. However faded and threadbare, what they have seen of him is at least enough to get their bearings by.”

Believe. What does that mean here? Is that an intellectual affirmation? Is it convincing ourselves and never doubting? Is this just a box we have to check off? I don’t think so.

For the disciples, their belief was foundational to the mission Jesus gave them. If they didn’t believe, what kind of witnesses would they be? If they don’t believe, why would anyone they meet want to believe?

Jesus’s life and love and good news are dependent on the disciples to continue to spread it out into the world. He was inviting them into an intimate, dynamic relationship with him.

And the same thing is true of us now. If people are going to come to believe in Jesus, it probably won’t be because they have had a bodily encounter with the resurrected Christ; it will be through the Holy Spirit, which is carried and passed on by the NEW body of Christ, the church, US.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his book, “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief,” talks about a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum. She was in her 20s when the Germans occupied Holland. She watched her world turn into an utter nightmare. She was sent to a concentration camp at Westerbork before being shipped to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

She wrote in her diary: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?”

Williams describes her attitude and commitment like this:

“She decided to occupy a certain place in the world, a place where others could somehow connect with God through her. She took responsibility for making God credible in the world. She took responsibility for God’s believability.”

What if THAT is what believing in God, believing in Jesus, means. That with and through our lives, we take responsibility for God’s believability. How many of us would say that we believe if that were the standard?

That’s what Jesus is asking of his disciples. But he doesn’t leave them on their own to do it, he doesn’t abandon them. He shows up. He brings them peace. He breathes his Holy Spirit into them.

The fact that we are gathered here in a church worshipping and loving Jesus, trying to understand his life and example, and bearing witness to the good news of his Resurrection says that the early disciples, with God’s help and the Holy Spirit, were up for the task.

I wonder: are we?

Let me give a brief witness. Over the past month, my daughter Ava has been in and out of A.I. DuPont Hospital, three times, first for surgery, then with multiple ambulance rides for seizures she couldn’t come out of. She’s home now and we’re hopeful she’ll be back in school this week and going to her senior prom next weekend. But epilepsy is challenging at times, and it’s been a rough, slow, frustrating go of things.

Not once going through it, have we, or I felt alone. Through so many text messages, phone calls, people checking in before or after classes, the school systems offering help, prayers, hugs, you name it–I have felt the Holy Spirit and God’s love at work through friends, through this congregation, through family, sometimes through strangers–volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House or, nurses, doctors, and people working at the Einstein Brother’s Bagels at the hospital, who can tell you are beyond tired this morning.

My experience is not unique. One of the things that touches my heart the most is to hear how people have shown up, how people have been there, how people have been LOVE in the lives of others. The way we love one another, even as Jesus loves us, can help make God believable for others.

We can see the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world. We can be the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world.

In the dark and confusing times that we are in the middle of in the world right now, can our belief, can our lives, can our love, be a witness for God’s believability in the world?

Yes, we can be that witness. Yes, God’s love, moving through us, through our belief, and our lives, can be credible in the world. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. No fire required.

Amen.

Our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class with professor, Fr. Dan Dunlap and guest presenter, Dr. Tom Long, one of the United States foremost preachers. That is how we started Saturday.

Some prayers

Dear God,

Some prayers move, they wander, they surf like a skateboard, they stop to look at birds or sit under a tree. Some prayers stop to pick up a six pack. Some prayers start while reading and writing next to the river and keep going sitting in a salon where my daughter is getting box braids in her hair to get ready for surgery on Monday.

U2’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” plays from the speakers, which makes me smile because a couple days ago Ava mentioned having that song on her playlist.

My prayer reads Brenda Miller’s “The Shape of Emptiness “ where a creative writing student whose mother had just died passes out Playdough to the class and has them squeeze it in their hands and then puts all their “hands” on a table at the front of the classroom. Miller says, “He made visible the air we never see.” And then:

“When he finishes reading he gathers our hands and gives them back to us one by one. We take them from him carefully so we can carry our emptiness into the day. We compare them, showing off the shape of our grasping. Curved like prayers. Like anger. Like love.”

God, maybe our prayers are like those hands, our grasping to fill emptiness, trying to bridge the distance between us. Sometimes that distance is wide and tough to cross. Other days we are sitting next to each other by the river smiling the same smile, thinking the same thoughts.

Lord, my prayer is written on my heart and it is for Ava on Monday and the next couple weeks, that all goes well and the surgeons and neurologists and medical team find what they need to know and that their knowledge brings hope.

Some prayers last for a couple days and have more silence in them than words. I know you appreciate the silence, Lord, because sometimes the world is too noisy. And silence speaks louder.

My prayer, God, is about love and right now love is sitting in a salon and being so full that words either pour out or nothing will come. Right now, love looks like box braids and someone taking the time and care to help my daughter so she doesn’t have to have her head shaved.

Some prayers take weeks, months, years. Some prayers run out of ink as I write them, run out of words as I speak them, and take an entire life to say what I need to say and listen for what I need to hear.

Some prayers are to be continued. Just like our love. Just like your love. And all of them are written on our hearts and with our lives, which belong to you.

Amen.

It never doesn’t take a village: an Ava update

The expression, “It takes a village to raise a child” is incomplete. The thing is, as we go through life, it never doesn’t take a village. The more I have opened myself up, welcomed friendships, been with family, worked at the church–there is never an age we don’t need a village around us. We lose people we love, we go through illnesses, life gives us things we don’t expect and aren’t ready for, and we need people. And we can be there for people.

One of the places I have seen that most clearly in my life is with our daughter Ava. I have written about her story here and there (this Tidewater Times story is maybe the best summary), Ava developing epilepsy at age 10 after brain swelling has become a defining part of her life in a way no one wants.

The village around us has included people from the Oxford Community Center and Oxford Fire Department, people from Christ Church Easton, people from Caroline and Talbot County Schools, family, friends, churches, social media, prayer lists, and goes further than I came name or be grateful enough for.

As we enter into a next phase of Ava’s care and world, I want to give an update and background for those newer to the village.

Since 2014, a range of medications have not been able to control her seizures in a way that doctors, Ava, or any of us are good with. But since moving her care to Nemours A.I. DuPont Hospital a few years back, there has been progress and some hope.

Late this past fall, we found out that Ava is a strong candidate for epilepsy ( resective brain) surgery. It comes down to what part of her brain is causing her seizures and what other cognitive functions that part of the brain is responsible for. After a number of tests, it seems likely that the seizures are coming from her left temporal lobe. They were originally worried that they were coming from her frontal lobe, which would have ruled out surgery.

The goal is for her not to have seizures any more, or total seizure freedom as the neurologists like to say. Given Ava’s case and how things have progressed, resective surgery is the best chance for her not to have any more seizures. But there are other options if that isn’t a possibility. Her neurosurgeon told us that from where Ava is right now based on test results, studies, etc., 95 percent of patients have some form of surgery available to them.

In December and January she had a contrast MRI and an angiogram, both of which are to help map where important things are so that on January 30 they can do a “stereotactic implantation of depth electrodes” to then do a long-term monitor of her seizures. Simply put, they are going to drill small holes through her skull and put monitors on her brain, then pull back her medicine and watch her having seizures.

Her neurosurgeon gave a solid analogy: when they monitor seizures on the outside of her skull, it’s like listening to a conversation through a wall; they need to step into the same room to really hear what’s being said. Because they need to know exactly where her seizures are happening and what part of her brain it is to know whether they can remove it.

This is incredibly exciting and hopeful news. It is not experimental surgery, it is something neurologists have been doing and feel is her best chance to live without seizures. And we know a young man in our community who has had the surgery and has been seizure free and thriving since.

It’s also a lot to take in, process, and sit with, both as a parent and for Ava. Excited, hopeful, nervous, and scared are all words that are tossed around regularly.

For Ava’s part, she is a rock star. She knows what she wants and she sits through medical procedures like she is eating lunch. This past year, a tattoo artist friend was ready to do a big cherry blossom tattoo on her shoulder. He asked how she did with pain/needles. She didn’t flinch or seem at all bothered through two-plus hours of drawing, coloring, and shading.

As a parent, and as a family, there are small things that make you sad. We will be in the hospital for Anna’s 21st birthday, and depending on how long they keep her (one to two weeks), Ava may be in the hospital for her 18th birthday.

If she is a candidate for resective surgery, recovery would be three to six months. Ava is scheduled to graduate from high school in the spring and is especially looking forward to senior week after graduation. So surgery would be in the middle of the summer.

But one procedure at a time, one day at a time. January 30 and the stereotactic testing is coming up. Before that, and before having to be in the hospital for two weeks, both Ava and Anna will try skiing for the first time. There are experiences to be had and memories to be made every day.

“Thank you” isn’t enough for all the love, all the prayers, all the reaching out, all the positive energy, all the good vibes and thoughts, that have come from so many people. I am, we are, so grateful.

At no point in life does it ever not take a village surrounding any of us to get us through.

Companions on the way

If we’re lucky, we don’t do life alone. We have help. On his livestream sermon this week, Fr. Charlie Barton talked about having “companions on the way.” That feels like the right way to think about this past week.

Last Sunday, while in church, I got calls from my cousin and my sister, back to back. Something didn’t seem right, so I stepped outside. Our parents’ house was on fire. My mom made it out and so did her dogs. That was the report I heard before running to my car and driving to Oxford. I learned on the drive that my father was at work.

When I got there, firefighters from Oxford, Trappe, and Easton were actively fighting the fire, neighbors and friends were up and down the street, everyone seeing how they could help. The kitchen and living room were gone, smoke had been pouring out of the house; firefighters had to cut a hole in the roof to fight the fire which had spread into the attic. The cats did not survive the fire.

It was and is surreal. My parents bought that house in the late 1960s, it’s where my sister and I grew up, and all of our family memories have been, and everything my parents own. Displaced doesn’t begin to describe what they are going through.

And all this is the first part of companions on the way. From the firefighters, to the auxiliary, to concerned neighbors and friends, to people at Christ Church reaching out, showing up, bringing food, asking how to help; insurance companies helping with the process of next steps; real estate agents helping them to find a place to live for the the next year–it’s been companions on the way.

The view from the 12th floor at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Hope shining through clouds.

On Monday it was neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. For the past few months, Holly has been struggling with Chiari Malformation, where the back of the brain blocks the spinal column. There were maybe three good days in 60+, taking someone who has been in great health and hitting her with vertigo, dizziness, skull-splitting headaches, nausea, no energy, not being able to drive at times. Surgery was the clear answer.

Companions on the way, part two. From family, to work, to friends, to prayer teams, to surgeons, doctors, nurses and medical staff, people showed up, and are showing up, to help, to pray, to bring food, to do what they can. We brought Holly home on Wednesday after a successful surgery, and recovery is underway.

A group of more than 100 bikers rolled up to A.I. DuPont on Saturday morning to drop off toys for kids in the hospital.

Part three. On Thursday, Ava and I made our way to A.I. DuPont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington. Her medicine has not been controlling her seizures this spring/summer and they wanted to keep her for an overnight EEG to monitor what is going on. As we checked in, we met a nurse practitioner who has worked in Easton and who has mutual friends. Talking to her and the neurologist on call this weekend, who is a specialist in pediatric epilepsy, someone who we had hoped to see but who has been scheduled too far out, they quickly asked if we could stay longer so they could cut back her medicine and work with some of her triggers so that they are more likely to be able capture some of her seizures to figure out the best course of action for her–whether surgery or different medications, or what.

So we find ourselves with a longer-than-anticipated stay at A.I. DuPont. We’ve watched the first Harry Potter movie and James Gunn’s new Suicide Squad (thank you HBO Max); Ava has beaten me multiple times at Connect 4 and I partially redeemed myself at Scrabble. She has a mummy headwrap on and the doctor said her EEGs are showing “sparks” (the conditions for/beginning of seizures) all over the place, much more than when we got here. So we wait, and oddly hope for seizures, knowing she is in good hands and that they can give the doctors here information that could hugely help her moving forward.

So that’s Sunday to Sunday this week. At every turn and at every corner, companions on the way have stepped up and made their presence known. Family, friends, and co-workers check in.

And I am carried by gratitude: for my parents both being okay after a devastating fire and for their finding a way forward to what is next; for Holly being able to have surgery to come back to herself and be healthy; for Ava being in great care and now on the radar screens of incredible doctors who have met her, are beginning to know her, and be personally involved in her case.

And for far too many companions on the way for me to name here. I feel frustrated for not being able to be in multiple places, this week especially, but can’t thank enough everyone who is there and helping.

Grace leans out of the alley

As a people, we get in our own way a lot. We make ourselves so busy, so manic, so overscheduled, and so quick to be heard that we rarely listen. And what and to whom we listen are often suspect.

“[A]lmost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of ‘psst’ that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.”
David Foster Wallce, Infinite Jest

I dig David Foster Wallace’s image of destiny leaning out of the alley, but we’re too busy to hear it. And the reason destiny, the big, epic, cool, yummy ideas and things that could fill and direct our lives, is left hanging out in the alley is that we’ve unknowingly designed the cities that are our lives and that is the space we’ve often left the stuff that might really matter.

Yesterday (Ash Wednesday) was the beginning of Lent. In N.T. Wright’s devotional book, “Lent for Everyone: Matthew, Year A,” he gives us a reading and some thoughts each day of the season. He begins with reminding us that when God does something new, he often involves unlikely, frequently surprised or alarmed people:

“He asks them to trust him in a new way, to put aside their natural reactions, to listen humbly for a fresh word and to act on it without knowing exactly how it’s going to work out… we may have to put our initial reactions on hold and be prepared to hear new words, to think new thoughts, and to live them out.”

I wonder if destiny isn’t the only thing we’ve shoved in the alley; I wonder if we’ve put grace there too. As we head into Lent and look for fresh words, new thoughts, and seasonal and spiritual renewal–maybe grace leans out of the alley to remind us it is there for the taking, our taking, our lives, and our hearts.

Preaching at an Ash Wednesday service at Christ Church Easton, Fr. Bill Ortt put it like this:

You are loved
You are forgiven
God wants his grace to be a part of your life.

And he quoted Psalm 90, which says, “Teach us to number our days, so that we might apply our hearts to wisdom.” (verse 12, KJV)

Mortality has loomed large in our community lately. We don’t need reminders. But that is one thing that Ash Wednesday does for us anyway. We come from dust and to dust we shall return. So we need to use the time we have the best we can. In numbering our days, we feel and learn the urgency and necessity of wisdom.

Allowing grace to speak to us, allowing grace into our lives, living into forgiveness so that we can let go of our past and be present now, and step towards what will be.

Seen/scene during Ava’s stay at Children’s Hospital in DC for testing and observation.

After Ash Wednesday services, I headed to Children’s Hospital in DC, where younger daughter Ava is staying for a few days for tests and observation to see if they can learn more about her seizures and spells. As we’re sitting in her room after breakfast, she puts on “Into the Spider-Verse,” a movie we both love.

Miles Morales is a young teenager in a new school and he doesn’t have a clue how he fits in or who he is supposed to be. After he tries to fail his way out of the school, his physics teacher calls him out and assigns him an essay.

“I’m assigning you an essay, not about physics, but about you and what kind of person you want to be.”

That’s a question we need to continually ask ourselves; an ongoing conversation. During the course of the movie, Miles finds his own way, not the way that the other Spider-Men and Women have, but a way that is his. He takes the book “Great Expectations,” turns it into street art of “No Expectations,” and lives into his personal destiny.

Maybe grace is how we get to our destiny. Maybe by reconciling and letting go of our past and the world’s designs for who we are supposed to be, and stepping into God’s grace, forgiveness, and vision for us, we can become who we are meant to be.

“My name is Miles Morales. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for like two days, I’ve been the one and only Spider-Man. I think you know the rest. I finished my essay. Saved a bunch of people…. And when I feel alone, like no one understands what I’m going through, I remember my friends who get it. I never thought I’d be able to do any of this stuff, but I can. “

Through God’s grace, we can. So when destiny, clothed in grace, leans out of the alley, stop, lean in, and listen.

Figuring out 18

Eighteen is a gut punch and a privilege. Anna is 18 today and it feels like time travel back to her birth as well as a look at my own white-bearded face in the mirror of mortality.

I don’t know what I thought life would look like when your oldest child turns 18, but I’m pretty sure whatever it was got derailed somewhere. There are sure a lot more tears, yelling, and questions than I thought there would be. Then again, I can attest to parenting karma being real, with fatherhood feeling both incredible and helpless at the same time.

We get pictures in our minds of what life will look like in the future and maybe how it’s supposed to look and feel now. When we want things for our children, they are often what we want versus what they might want at a given time.

Anna’s on her own timeline, with her own thoughts and feelings; I was (and am) the same way, so it shouldn’t surprise me. But letting that sink in goes against some of what we think we should be doing as parents.

If we’re lucky, we get to walk the road with our kids, we can’t walk it for them.

Over the past couple months, I’ve started to learn something experientially that has been a game-changer. Anna and I have had some deep conversations that made me stop and take stock. I was at a workshop recently where our group discussed, “moments of conversion:” those experiences that stop us, make us see differently, and change us. And that’s what listening to Anna gave me: I had to stop, realize I was completely missing things she was saying, and start from square one.

That being the case, we are still on the road of life and father-daughter relationship together. And reading James K.A. Smith’s “On the Road with St. Augustine,” I came across this line:

“Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road, it just changes how you travel.”
James K.A. Smith

And I hope I can keep that up and make the most of it. Conversion is a day-to-day process and there is a lot of road still to travel. I have a lot to learn about 18 and beyond.

When Anna turned 16, I wrote her a letter of sorts. I wouldn’t change anything in it now, it all stands. But a couple years along, and maybe I see a few things. I am smitten by her gifts and her passions.

Anna is all about pets. She is the girl who disappears and turns up in anyone’s house with a cat or dog in her arms. And animals take to her (until she dresses them up). She’s looking to start volunteering at Talbot Humane this winter and I honestly wonder whether that might be the beginning of a calling of sorts. Dr. Doolitttle-in-training.

Kids are drawn to her. If it’s not animals, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her wrangling kids at a daycare or preschool. She is magnetic in a pied-piper kind of way and kids follow her. And it happens whenever she is around them.

When it comes to art and puzzles, Anna has a zen focus. I’ve never seen a teenager put together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Anna does them in an evening and can tune out whatever else is going on. She is the same way with coloring, doodling intricate patterns, or painting. They are things that brighten her days, and thereby brighten mine.

Anna is extroverted. This hit me like a rolled-up newspaper when she talked about it after a personality test in school. As an introvert raising a child similar to me in many ways, I just never thought about it, then hearing her say it, I looked back over her life with a giant “no duh” and it made sense. She recharges around people and looks for ways to be social.

She is fiercely protective of her sister. I know the older sibling protective thing, but this is something different. Anna has been with Ava step-by-step through month-long hospitalization, seizures, and her provoked epilepsy adventure. Anna frequently calls her mom or I out about making sure Ava is hydrated, not in the sun too long, and is getting enough sleep. This isn’t to say that teenage sisters don’t fight like wolverines (they do), but when push comes to punch, Anna hasn’t missed a neurology appoint, watches out for and over her sister, and worries about her constantly.

Anna feels deeply in a world where that can count against you. It’s a hard thing as a father to watch your child fall down, process, and struggle. It’s a wonderful thing when they get back up, learn, and try again or try something different. Anna has an empathetic heart (at times 🙂 where that isn’t frequently en vogue with teenagers. Sometimes it takes us a while to find our tribe and I know she’s working on hers.

If we’re lucky, we get to walk the road with our kids, we can’t walk it for them. We can’t speed them up and even if we point out rocky ground and potholes, strong-willed kids still find them on their own.

Anna has been my learning curve, my guinea pig as I try to figure out how to be a father. She has picked me up at times when I’ve failed and it’s been the biggest honor and adventure I’ve known to walk her road with her.

On her turning 18, I see next steps, new experiences, more tears and laughter, more dressed up pets, Starbucks runs, puzzles and artwork, and things even a Romper-Room magic looking glass can’t see coming. One of these days I might figure out how to be a parent. Until then, I’ll be happy when she smiles.

Ava is a rock. She takes things in stride where her sister is all over the map. If she is upset, it means something is up.

Over the last couple years, I’ve had too many reasons to write about Ava and what she’s been through with her seizures. Yet, seizures are the furthest thing from defining her.

This is a year of parenting milestones. Anna turned 16 and now Ava turns 13, and we are head first into the teenage years.

Ava is the smart kid without much common sense. She’ll pick up on something five minutes after the conversation because she’s been thinking about her own thing. She makes honor roll effortlessly and organizes herself in ways her sister (and her father) may never figure out.

This year the younger sister by three years grew taller than the older. They like to stand next to each other and have people guess who is older. The guess is usually Ava.

She endures and carries on. Ava has taken more pills over the past two and a half years than I have taken in 45. She’s had to worry about things she can’t understand or control. And yet, while in the hospital for a month, her biggest complaint during that stretch was not being allowed to have a soda while she was in intensive care.

Ava finds humor in simple things. She laughs easily and often. She isn’t that worried about what other people think and doesn’t seem to need to be surrounded by friends all the time. She is nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning or off the couch.

I love remembering her packing the 96-pack of Crayola crayons in her backpack so she was sure to have the right color to draw with. I love that when doctors said she probably wouldn’t be ready to play field hockey after getting out of the hospital, that Ava was named the team MVP for the season and was a force on the field. I love that she already knows the key things she wants to do when she visits Ocean City this summer, including her annual tradition of getting hair wraps.

Ava surprises me frequently. Her thoughts come out of left field. She has taught me more about taking life as it comes and about perseverance than I could have imagined. She taught me about prayer and about gratitude and about carpe’ing the diem.

When Ava was born, I remember thinking she and her sister will be 13 and 16 at the same time. Formidable parenting patience required.

I look at her attitude. I look at her humor and personality. I look at her quirkiness and kindness. And I know that she will live life on her own terms and at her own pace. But she’ll probably need someone to wake her up in the mornings 🙂

Saturday Prayer

I have not sat still well today. Solitude’s double-edged sword had me pacing, caged.

I walked Harper across town to the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry and back in the morning. I cut grass, which brings on thinking for me. I read and wrote for a book review article coming due. Changed lightbulbs. Sitting in the yard, I had to move.

I hop on my bike and cruise through town, riding down to the shoreline at the park. I pull Gary Snyder’s “Turtle Island” from my pocket, in all its underlined, written in, and dog-eared grace.

I close my eyes with my face in the sun. An evening breeze brushes my ears and hair.

The waves are sharing an embrace and a conversation with the shoreline; sitting in silence, it is all I can hear–a soundtrack no less extraordinary for being commonplace.

I bend my head in prayer to listen. Language doesn’t need words to speak. No, that’s not it. God doesn’t need words to speak to those who listen.

I leaf through Snyder, who offers a “Prayer for the Great Family:”

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep–he who wakes us–
in our minds so be it

I don’t properly write in my pocket notebook very often, opting for a bigger one where my mind stretches more. But the pocket notebook made the bike ride, and as I scrawl these thoughts together, I see words bleeding through from the next page.

They are Ava’s from the rehab hospital last year. She was working on getting her words back with a therapist–she couldn’t find the right words to say, to answer, but she could write them down. Today being a year since the seizure that landed her there, it doesn’t seem a coincidence to have her words find me here.

I close now wet eyes again to listen to the river. And God.

Riding my bike through town, life goes on. People are happy eating, walking, biking. There are kids playing in the sand and ankle deep in the water at the Strand.

Almost home, I turn up Jack’s Point Rd., and an Eastern Bluebird flies across the road in front of me, into a vacant lot. I have only seen a handful of bluebirds in town and I smile. If you read birds, happiness must be nearby.