Talk With the Preacher

The phrase sounds ominous to my “punitive-religion” DNA . . . makes me think of God scanning a database of all the mean things I ever said to my sister growing up.

But this idea took on new and hopeful meaning for me recently.

Looking around, I’ve noticed lately that quite a few of my friends are struggling with the onset of challenges related to aging. And I don’t really mean issues like gray hair (though, admittedly, this is a critical issue for some of us).

Actually, though, it’s likely none of them really cares what color their hair is . . . I notice more challenges with debilitating physical situations and, even more frustrating, a struggle with memory.

Friends who spent years and years—like, 60—leading Calvary’s boards and committees, caring for sick folks in the church, running Sunday School programs, hosting receptions, singing in the choir . . . you know, all those things . . . are now unable to get down to church much at all anymore.

And, as one told me with tears in his eyes the other day, “Half the time I can’t even remember where I am.”

There’s so much grief around this passage in life. What will happen, I wonder, when no one remembers how he used to be?

I carried the heaviness of his pain with me after our visit the other day. I know there is not much I can do to help, other than to try to help keep him as connected as possible to his church family and to God.

But some days I wish with all my might that I could turn the clock back just a little and give back the mental clarity and sharp recall that were such hallmarks for him . . . or even just adequately communicate to all the new people in our community what leadership and vision, commitment and presence he and many other elderly members gave over the years to this community.

As the community changes and the time goes by, I’m afraid, as he is, that everyone will forget. I got to thinking how blessed we are then, how blessed he is, that even if everyone else forgets . . . God will never forget. I realized this gift of hope as I sat next to his bedside and read out loud the beautiful words of the Psalmist:

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

Gray hair, feeble bodies . . . loss of purpose, loss of relationship . . . changing of the guard, transitions in life . . . loving and losing . . . it all hurts a little. Sometimes a lot, actually. But today I think I’ll hang on tight to the thought that, even when we can’t even remember any of this, even where we are half the time . . . well, God never forgets.

God never forgets.

My office has a back door. Whoever designed it that way, I want to publicly and officially say thanks. Since yesterday I’ve been sneaking in and out the back door in an effort to stay out of the chaos.

American Baptists have taken over the building and are using all our space for their Executive Board meeting this week. There are Baptists all over the building. They are meeting for hours and hours in every conceivable nook and cranny of the church building. The lobby of the church office has been repurposed as Baptist Command Central and it looks, I kid you not, like the air traffic control scenes in the movie Airplane!.

I’m hiding under my desk trying my best to stay out of the way, then quietly slipping out the back door. Stay tuned to see if my strategy works . . . .

My office has a back door. Whoever designed it that way, I want to publicly and officially say thanks. Since yesterday I’ve been sneaking in and out the back door in an effort to stay out of the chaos.

American Baptists have taken over the building and are using all our space for their Executive Board meeting this week. There are Baptists all over the building. They are meeting for hours and hours in every conceivable nook and cranny of the church building. The lobby of the church office has been repurposed as Baptist Command Central and it looks, I kid you not, like the air traffic control scenes in the movie Airplane!.

I’m hiding under my desk trying my best to stay out of the way, then quietly slipping out the back door. Stay tuned to see if my strategy works . . . .

History, history. It’s all around us. And by “us” I mean anybody in or near the Calvary offices this week.

For weeks, committed volunteers have been mining the archives for items to display. I believe, though I am not going to try this, that an entire blog could be constructed around the amazing pieces of history carefully saved for some future viewing.

And it seems that the future is now (Baptists are coming), so we are living surrounded by the past.

Here’s one picture we found, a clipping from the May 8, 1957 Washington Post, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the ABC (then called the Northern Baptist Convention), which was, if you haven’t heard me say it enough, founded right here at Calvary.

In this picture you’ll see Dr. Abernethy, Calvary pastor emeritus, posing with thoughtfully interested teenager, Bob Tiller.

Not that this isn’t a fabulous and deeply historical photograph, but you might be wondering why exactly this particular piece of history caught my attention. Well, the thing is, it is now 50 years after this picture was taken. Dr. Abernethy is long gone, but Bob Tiller is very much here.

Bob was kind enough to come by the other day and pose for another photo with another pastor of Calvary, a photographic image of the changing face of this congregation. Significantly different, but still about the same business.

How cool is that?

I got back into town very late last night (really, very early this morning) having heard the news that a Calvary friend was in the hospital. I knew this was urgent; though he’d been battling cancer for at least a year, we all knew he couldn’t hang on much longer.

I kept thinking of the grief his wife has been bearing as she’s watched him suffer, and so I scrambled around this morning to rush to the hospital, hoping to be of some comfort to them. I finally got there, found a parking place and navigated my way through the maze that is Washington Hospital Center, until I found room 3NE123.

But as I opened the door to his room the housekeeping staff brushed past, just having finished their work.

The room was clean. Antiseptic, really.

The bed was stripped; the floor had been mopped; the bathroom scrubbed. No scent of human suffering here. Instead, the smell of strong cleaning chemicals hit me in the face as I entered.

Every single personal item had been removed; you wouldn’t even know anyone had even been here, much less been laboring through the task of dying.

It was right in the doorway of 3NE123 at that moment that I had the worst sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and wondered again:

What makes a life?

Can this world be mopped up, scrubbed away, stripped clean of a whole life lived?

Just the thought took my breath away.

As I approached the nurses’ desk she was getting ready to call his family to tell them the news. Though I was still a little stunned that I’d missed him—by only just a few minutes—I offered to help.

As we broke the news to his wife there was a long silence on the other end of the telephone.

I braced for her grief.

Instead, her clear, strong voice exclaimed: “Oh, I am so glad he’s out of pain. It was so hard to watch him suffer.”

She continued, and I could hear her smiling, “And, do you know, Pastor Amy, that I got to say goodbye? We got to say goodbye to each other. I’ll miss him so much, but I’m so glad we had such a life together.”

I find myself so very often wandering through holy moments like these, alternately shocked, scared, sad, amazed, humbled, overwhelmed . . . wondering about the larger questions like:

What makes a life?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know whatever the answer is, it wasn’t in 3NE123 this morning. And, I got to thinking, maybe it wasn’t even in the living, breathing human body most recently inhabiting that room.

I don’t know what makes a life, but I’m thinking it could probably be found in a sweet goodbye; in living memories of a life together; in wishing only joy and freedom for one you love, even if it hurts until your heart breaks.

I’ll spend the rest of today and probably a few more days wondering what makes a life, because even though the nurse told me he’d died just a little while before . . . he still seemed alive to her. And to me.

And maybe that’s what makes a life.

I hate that sappy platitude: home is where your heart is.

Whenever I hear it I immediately think I fell asleep and somehow ended up in the final scene of Where the Heart Is, the movie adaptation of Billie Letts’ beautiful book by the same name.

(I always cry. EVERY time.)

The movie is a little hokey, but I love it (and, also, I secretly want to be Ashley Judd. Who doesn’t?). Recently, though, clinging to the “home is where your heart is” idea has been something comforting, I tell you.

We been moving (see earlier post on garage sale drama). It’s a sort of interim move, as we’ve embarked now on a rather ambitious building project (just a foreshadowing of future posts . . . ), and are hoping to move into our new space, well, as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we’re making our home in someone else’s house. It’s perfect for our family this summer. And, by coincidence, we really like the people who own it, who happen to be gone for the summer (Craigslist strikes again!).

But it doesn’t quite feel like home.

I know that this feeling is perfectly understandable, but disconcerting nonetheless. Mark’s solution is to keep telling himself this is our “summer house”. So far that has not worked for me. I just can’t find everything I need; the whole situation feels like a nice pair of shoes that are not broken in yet.

I’d been living with this discomfort for a week or so when the kids and I embarked on a summer reading adventure. Because of the layout of the summer house we are not spending as much time in front of the television, and we’d decided together to read The Hiding Place out loud. I was curled up with three increasingly large children and one (also pretty large now) dog, reading a story that captured my imagination when I was their ages. They asked questions occasionally as I read; I read aloud (just one more page!), all the while acutely aware that times like these are for cherishing.

And that’s when I realized: I am home. Surrounded by people I love, sharing experiences that permanently plant themselves in memories, feeling little warm bodies next to me, hearing their curious comments (”What does ‘irretrievable‘ mean again?”), recognizing the satisfaction of sharing something I love with people I love . . . that’s when you’re home, really.

Right?

No matter how long it takes to find the salt and pepper.

We have an inside joke in the office and it has to do with red, terrycloth headbands. I can’t really tell the story here, but I can tell you that the mention of terrycloth headbands sends a few of us into convulsive laughter (ahhh! church work!).

And, to be honest, this attitude of derisive laughter has really provided the context for any thought I ever may have had about terrycloth.

Until last week.

I am not trying to be overly dramatic, but yesterday I came to the profound realization that the public wearing of any garment made of terrycloth is synonymous with an extremely poor fashion choice.

Really poor.

To be fair, I lived through the 70s and I’ll admit I wore my share of terrycloth beach cover-ups and tennis shorts.

(My only defense for this admission is that, really, I was only 10 and under during that time in history . . . I think it’s more appropriate to hold my parents responsible, don’t you?)

But, last week ushered in the first really hot and sticky day of the summer. In the great city of eternal concrete dotted with limestone monuments and government edifices, the sun beats down, reflects back up and hits you right between the eyes. And you sweat to death.

As a result, everyone was trying their best to keep cool. And, I made this troubling discovery: I noticed a disturbing number of individuals sporting (you guessed it!) terrycloth.

Headbands.

Friends, even tennis players look silly wearing terrycloth headbands. What, in the name of all that is fashionably acceptable would cause a regular, run-of-the-mill individual to wake up one morning, look in the mirror and exclaim, “Well, I think I’ll wear my terrycloth headband today!”?

(Perhaps it’s one of those mysteries Paul was referring to when he wrote about seeing in a mirror dimly—maybe we’ll never know the answer?)

In the meantime, I can think of several alternative options for staying cool, options that don’t severely hinder attempts at basically acceptable fashion.

Wear a hat, for Pete’s sake. Slip into Starbucks and cool off. Don something light and linen-y. Buy a fan. Stick your feet into the reflecting pool . . . the possibilities are endless.

But none of them, I am telling you, involve headbands. Or terrycloth.

None.

You know what they say . . . “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.

Well, I learned the deeper meaning of this phrase this weekend, when we hauled most of the material contents of our house out to the curb for the neighborhood garage sale.

This happens to come at a great time for us, as we are in the process of moving houses, but I have to say: the whole experience was rather taxing.

What wore me out was hauling boxes, running up and down the stairs over and over and over again, and braving the heat of a DC summer, it’s true. I sat (for days, really) with a black marker and pages and pages of stickers, pulling prices out of thin air (just how much will someone pay for a hideous floral painting that’s been sitting in the basement for four years?). It was all very upsetting.

But it wasn’t just the hauling and the pricing . . . throughout this whole experience I found myself struggling with something akin to a moral dilemma: was I offending garage sale attendees by placing a light up, glow-in-the-dark Santa Claus out on the table? Would people roll their eyes in derision when they saw the plastic serving trays leftover from the bridal shower last month? And what about that hideous old 1980s boom box?

This really bothered me.

I am not under the impression that my front yard is some upscale boutique, mind you, but I admit I did feel some strange obligatory feeling that I should be offering quality merchandise to those who got out of bed so early on Saturday morning to come to my garage sale.

(I’ve already learned that pastors are pleasers. But does this malady have to extend all the way to . . . garage sales? COME ON!)

So strong was this feeling that it was only sheer desperation, I tell you, that pushed me to throw all caution to the wind and put all the junk I could dig out from anywhere in the house right out front along with all the great books, furniture and housewares I just knew folks would snap up immediately.

Early Saturday morning, about 6 a.m., you could have found me setting up tables, hauling out boxes, organizing displays (all the while yelling at family members to get out of bed and help!). We all got out there eventually and the kids, especially, took enthusiastically to organizing their table (I do here admit that bribes were involved).

And then they came.

Garage sale veterans started pulling up to the curb shortly after 7 a.m. in their flatbed trucks and big, empty vans.

Imagine my surprise (and, honestly, offense) when almost every one of them sauntered through my beautiful displays . . . then went on to the neighbors’.

I was losing heart when suddenly hoards of regular garage sale shoppers (mostly my neighbors) began to descend. Now, I thought, all the great stuff would go.

Nope.

People walked right by the great china I had for sale, turned their noses up at crystal bowls never opened (vestiges of the wedding 16 years ago), and completely ignored the two London Fog coats I had artfully displayed.

No, I believe one of the first items to go was one of the plastic serving trays from the bridal shower (25¢─cha-ching!), shortly followed by (you guessed it) the floral paintings. The light-up, glow-in-the-dark Santa, along with two other Santa figurines were next (the date was June 2, mind you), and the pile of assorted bread baskets . . . well, that walked in the first half hour. The 80s boom box as also a hot seller—gone before we could blink.

Go figure.

I kept turning to Mark and my friend Caroline (who helped me tremendously in this adventure and also had some choice items for sale—case in point a Ziploc baggie filled with assorted cabinet hardware, none of which matched. SOLD: 50¢), exclaiming in surprise over what people were buying.

I just could not believe how quickly folks paid money to haul away my trash.

At the end of the day it was almost all gone. All of it, that is, except . . . the china, the crystal bowls and the coats, of course.

People carried away boxes of old books and used table cloths, wax-encrusted candle holders and board games with missing pieces.

And they seemed to do so with delight (with the notable exception of the boom box purchaser, who came back later in the day to return a tape that had been left in the tape player. As it was a Calvary service tape, I was rudely accused of proselytizing by garage sale. I kindly informed the customer that, if I were him, I wouldn’t return the tape. Who knows? This might be akin to buying an old painting and finding the original Constitution of Independence concealed underneath?).

After it was all over Mark and I were debriefing and exclaiming in amazement again over what people bought. Mark said he thought the theme of our garage sale could be: “Money for Nothing” but, having hauled all that stuff out to the front yard, I know full well it was far from nothing.

Instead, I’ll stick with “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.

Or, rather: “One man’s trash is . . . now another man’s trash!”

(Anybody need a dining room table or some fine china?)