Strings, Attached

Posted on by under History and Place

When I said goodbye to California when I was seven, I didn’t realize that I was letting the only home I’d known slip through my fingers. At seven, packing up two large moving trucks with everything you own seems like an adventure. I got into that large yellow truck and didn’t look back for a long while.

Home, for me, is the place I’ve lived most of my days since: Spokane, Washington, a medium-sized city with a small town feel, far from the rain and gloom of Seattle, on the coast. All of the bedrooms I’ve had to myself are in this city. This is where my favorite swing hangs, in my favorite park, the place I go to contemplate life, or to wait for a phone call from a boy that may or may not come. We have history, Spokane and I.

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I woke up in the wee hours to catch my flight to California. The temperature hovered somewhere right around freezing. This is the October I have come to know. Once we’d made it through security, there was little difference in temperature between airports and planes as we made our way south. But when I stepped out of the airport and into the Southern California afternoon, I intuitively peeled off my cardigan. My bare shoulders recognized the October sun.

There’s a part of me that has always protected myself against loving my birthplace. I’ve told myself that it’s expensive, and that it’s smoggy. I’ve told myself that there are more drive-by shootings there than there are in Spokane. All of this is true. But I tell myself something else: San Diego doesn’t belong to me. It takes more than being born into a place or a family to make it yours. That isn’t true.

Although my skin pinkens and burns easily, I notice that my joints are less creaky in the warmth. I don’t have to take several times the recommended daily dose of vitamin D by mouth, but allow my body to synthesize it while I walk along the beach, listening to the music of the seagulls and the way the waves come in, always persistent, never stopping.

In Spokane, people frequently look bemused when I tell them that I’m not an outdoorsy person. My Tinder matches tell me that their perfect date includes a hike, or a bike ride, or a snowshoeing excursion. Though I don’t love Spokane’s brand of outdoor activity, I could walk along the beach for hours, drinking in the smell of the sea. I could drift through the streets of my birthplace endlessly, following the scent of Mexican food.

On this last trip, I sat down with my family at a restaurant I’ve visited on every trip to San Diego, and many times before we moved. As we waited for a table, I watched the hypnotic motions of the women making homemade tortillas, tossing them onto an endless pile that never seemed to dwindle as waitstaff came to wrap a handful in paper to take to one of their tables.

I like to try new food and drink wherever I go, but not here. Here, there is only one possible order, a tostada suprema (which comes with shredded beef and pork). I order fresh flour tortillas on the side and heap the contents into extemporaneous soft tacos. I close my eyes and I am transported to any one of my previous visits. It’s undeniable: I have history with San Diego, too.

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But there is more to it than that, of course, more than just the food and the sunshine. We pass the hospital where I was born, and my mom points it out. Sharp Hospital. Someone in the marketing department in the 80s decided to create tiny shirts that said “I’m a Sharp baby.” My mom still has mine.

I have family in this city, and a bit further up, in Costa Mesa and neighboring places that roll off my tongue easily, although it takes me a moment to connect them with the signs on the freeway inviting me to exit. I know the names because I’ve heard people say them. Sometimes, that’s how my faraway family feels. The names are familiar, natural, but I don’t quite know if I can claim that as mine. There is so much distance, so much life lived away from each other. 

But on this most recent trip, I began to try. I shimmied into the role of cousin, niece, granddaughter. I soaked in each person and the way they blurred together with every other memory we’ve had together, indistinct, layered.

I was sorry to leave. Perhaps that is what I’ve always been protecting myself against. There is an eternal, persistent ache to belonging in more than one place. There are Cara-shaped holes that cannot all be filled at once. There are strings that pull at me no matter where I am.

* * * * *

Cara Stickland is a writer from Spokane with some warmer roots reaching south. Spokane photo by Michelle Lee; Palm Tree photo by Jesse Collins.

People of the Red Willow

Posted on by under History and Place

Picture a hot, bright, red sand landscape. High trees surround it and there’s a sacred mountain in the distance. There are adobe dwellings, five stories high like an apartment building, but with walls three or four feet thick. A creek cuts the reservation in two. Dogs run aimlessly across the sandy clearing. You can call them but they won’t stop to be cooed at or petted. The people living there ask, sometimes angrily, not to have their pictures taken.

Dan and I visited the Taos Pueblo, a dwelling that has been lived in continuously for 1,000 years. I went with feelings of trepidation and eagerness that I believe are common for white people shouldering the invisible knapsack of our privilege. Our tour guide, White Feather, had his hands full with us, a mixed crowd but mainly well-heeled retirees.

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Taos Pueblo

The Taos Pueblo is the home of the Red Willow People, he explained. Named after Red Willow Creek, the stream that crosses the reservation. He told us that the Pueblo was first conquered in the sixteenth century by the Spaniards. Then there was a revolt and a reconquest several times over. Even though the Puebloans in the end accepted colonial rule and the accompanying Catholicism, they retained their secret religion. That and their language they have kept guarded from linguists and scholars for years. They don’t need anyone to disseminate cultural findings on them. The Red Willow people are content to preserve their own culture, never minding the imperialist mindset that says all research should be available to anyone.

“What about your taxes?” one tourist asked.

“What about them?”

“Do you pay taxes?”

“Yes, of course. We are United States citizens. We all pay our taxes.”

The woman hung grimly on to the subject. “But how do report how much you’ve made? Word of mouth?”

White Feather explained that all Puebloans report their income on the standard forms. “Just like you,” he said.

The woman pursed her lips but backed off. White Feather returned to his talk about the exodus of many Puebloans from the reservation when the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 incentivized leaving the tightly knit community in favor of separate housing.

It was easy for me to feel sorry for the Red Willow people, so obviously at the mercy, for the past nearly 500 years, of foreign rule and cultural imposition. But another idea crept in. They  have an unbroken, continuous history. A deep understanding of their past. The narrative has everything to do with rootedness, unlike the story of most of us in the western world.

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Iglesia de San Gerónimo – Taos Pueblo

Some of us spend hours in libraries, doing complicated genealogical research, trying to make the silent record speak to us. Some of our ancestors were ashamed of where they’d come from. They changed their names and concealed their family history with skill. They invented themselves anew. The Red Willow people, protecting their culture, families, and religion have safe-guarded against fragmenting. They keep both their Spanish and native names. They are the richer for it, even as they face twenty-first century problems–especially the abandonment of the Pueblo by the younger generations.

We spent an afternoon there that I will remember for the rest of my life. It was not a happy time. But it was one of deep meaning and eventual prayer.

I don’t know how to pray for the Puebloans but I remember them to God. The sorrows are entrenched in the richness of the place.

Isn’t that how it goes?

Of Mists and Stones

Posted on by under Guest, Secret Places

We arrive early in the morning, while the mist from the sea is still floating in among the long rows of stones. We can barely see the tops of the trees through the fog. The sky is a dull, opaque gray that blocks out the sun. It is eerily beautiful.

Everything is covered in a thin layer of dew and the air is chilly, chillier than I expected. I wrap myself in the only extra piece of clothing I brought: a red and gold scarf that clashes with my rose-colored shorts and teal sneakers.

No one knows exactly why the stones are standing here or what purpose they served. A local legend, dating back hundreds of years to the Celtic past of the region, tells of Roman soldiers turned to stone by the wizard Merlin.

In my childhood, I was captivated by Celtic stories of priestesses, fertility rites, and the struggle between the feminine spirituality of pagan traditions and the patriarchal religion of Christianity. Stories set in wild forests, on mystical islands, and in big craggy castles enthralled me. Now standing in a field of mysterious stone formations on the Breton coast, I feel like I am walking through those enchanted tales.

This is Brittany.  Stretching out into the Atlantic in northwestern France, Brittany, or Breizh, is one of the six Celtic nations, where Celtic languages continue to be spoken. Its distinct cultural heritage dates back to the early medieval era. We have visited our beloved France before: strolled the cobblestone streets of Paris, rode bicycles through vineyards of Chardonnay and Syrah, basked in the sun of the French Riviera. This is a different France, earthy and untamed.

Here I stand, on the southern shores of Brittany, on the Gulf of Morbihan, in a town called Carnac, known for its Neolithic menhir, or standing stones. There are thousands of stones, dating back thousands of years. Some in long rows, some stacked to form tombs and burial chambers, and others just standing alone, towering, keeping solemn wdscf7070atch, marking time as centuries go by.

The Ménec alignments are eleven rows of stones standing in a grassy field, and that’s where my husband and I wander on this misty morning. At the western end of the field, the stones rise up way above our heads. My husband pretends to hold up a large stone that is tilted toward the ground and I laugh. As we walk along the rows, the stones get smaller and smaller, as if sinking into the soft soil below. At the eastern end, they are barely two feet high.

Later in the afternoon, we walk past a copse of trees, thin spindles of wood, partially covered in lichen, ivy vines snaking up the trunks. The light is ethereal and golden, breaking through the leaves and flooding the area. It feels otherworldly. Even the air feels different, cool but weighty. It is easy to see how legends of wizards and Druids, priestesses and sorceresses came about in this misty place.

And it calls us to slow and observe, to wonder and wander around these stones that stand guard, these trees that cast spells.  It invites us to graze our fingers along the rough edges of stones who have stood on this ground for thousands of years. Go ahead, ask your questions of us and we will tell you all that we have seen.

The stones hold secrets and the trees offer communion and the cool, damp mist coming in from the sea cloaks it all in a mystical magic I had never seen before. We are walking through the present, but also through the past. We are out in the open, but also within the close quarters of ancient whispers.

Here, I am connected with the past, entrenched in it. The history isn’t on display in a museum, kept safely behind glass. It is here, where I can reach out and touch, where I can wander inside it, where I feel the pull of time transporting me back through the centuries. And it leaves me with the incredible impression of magic and legend and secrets, all tucked into the beautiful seashores of northwestern France.

* * * * *

jywatkinsJamie Y. Watkins is a wife, sister, daughter, and friend. She works at a non-profit by day and goes to school at night, trying her best to find times to write in between. Her biggest passions are travel–France in particular– film, and good conversation. She lives in New Jersey, where she and her husband open their house to others with good food and wine. She blogs at Seek.Follow.Love about wrestling with faith and church, looking for meaning in the every day, and feeling her way through life. Twitter: @jamieywatkins Facebook: @jywatkinswriter

 

Dear Diary

Posted on by under Secret Places

“Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.” —Anne Frank, June 20, 1942

“She found that when she didn’t have a notebook it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her, whereas when she wrote, they flowed out faster than she could put them down.” ―Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

***

I am 14 years old, sitting cross-legged on my yellow bedspread behind the locked door of my bedroom. A college-ruled three-subject notebook is open in my lap, and I scribble away, thoughts coming to me faster than I can get them down on paper.

Excitement about the cute boy on the bus who actually said hello to me today. Anxiety about the oral report I’m expected to give in social studies class tomorrow morning. Heartache about being ignored in the cafeteria by a girl I used to consider my best friend.

***

I am 20 years old, a junior in college, tucked into a wood-scarred booth in the campus grill. Snow is piling up outside, and I am settled into my favorite study spot with a hot mug of tea and piles of manila envelopes full of submissions to the literary magazine, of which I am co-editor. I arrange a stack of blank index cards upon which I will record my impressions of the poems and stories.

But first, I open the hardcover black and white lab book that has served as my journal since last term’s poetry-writing class. Now that I am no longer expected to periodically turn it in for review, I feel a new-found freedom to write without editing myself, comforted that no one will read my private thoughts but me.

I write about my confusing romantic feelings for a male friend who happens to be dating someone else. I vent about my concerns for my father, who is weathering the downturn of the steel industry and seems to be aging at presidential speed between my visits home. I jot down prayers and snippets of Scripture to comfort and encourage myself.

***

journalI am 29 years old, working in a job that I love, in a city that I love, involved in a quirky inner-city church that I love. I am sharing a quaint townhouse with two other single women who have become good friends. And I am falling in love with a man I met seven years ago, but started dating only after we lived a couple hundred miles away from one another.

Every evening before I go to sleep, I pour my heart out on paper, into fabric-covered journals given to me as gifts and filled at a record pace. It isn’t decision time yet, but what if this is the man I am supposed to marry? What will this mean for the life I am building in this place, with these people?

Over the next several months, in the pages of several more journals, those questions are answered. I am even more deeply committed my job, my city, my friends, and my church. I write with excitement about buying a house and living alone for the first time in my life.

***

The day after I turn 40, my mother, diagnosed seven months earlier with pancreatic cancer, goes into hospice care. I open a Word document on my laptop and type my grief and fear and rage onto the screen. Tears stream down my face as I hit save and shut down.

***

I celebrated my 50th birthday last month. For a decade or more, my journal entries have become more and more sporadic, as I check in to write at least twice a year—on my birthday and on New Year’s Day. Email and blog posts and social media have replaced my hand-written diary as venues for self-expression. Almost everything I write has an audience.

As I wrote my annual birthday journal entry in the leather-bound diary that I only occasionally crack open these days, I made a resolution. I haven’t missed a day of writing in my journal since.

***

Amy bio YAH

The Inner Room

Posted on by under Secret Places

I am at the front of the room, facilitating conversation with the ten teenage girls who signed up for the seminar. I don’t have any experience with youth ministry but I was willing. In a small country parish, that is enough.

I recognize a few of the faces in front of me, members of faithful families who have “regular” pews.  I’m not sure why the others are here. Perhaps someone convinced them to come or they were so desperate to get out of the house during the summer weeks that they showed up. Their faces are a blend of emerging confidence and awkward child-likeness. They are lovely and quirky, innocent and fear-filled.

On brown paper, written in my fanciest handwriting, is our theme: You Were Made to SOAR! The themes are bulleted below: Sacraments, Silence, Service and Renewal, Relationship, Real Joy.  At the moment, I’m setting the stage to talk on the topic of silence.

“Some describe silence as going into your inner room. A place inside where you are safe and calm and you can talk to God — even if everything on the outside is crazy.”

We flip to Matthew’s Gospel and read about going to your inner room. I talk about the holy witness of people who were imprisoned and couldn’t “do” anything to serve God that we still recognize as saints. Their eyes indicate engagement; the ever-so-slight creases on their foreheads show it’s not quite clicking yet.  

I hesitate for a moment and glance downward around the bland classroom, a little unsure about sharing something vulnerable. When I was their age, I always felt like I was on the outside from my peers. The little girl in me is still afraid: Were they going to judge me? To ridicule something precious?  

“For example, when I am trying to get serious about silence, I envision a cozy cabin in my mind.”  I glance up to see if it will be okay to continue with the illustration. Seems so.8a4c4b877410e253d9c7e52aaa7afd74

“I roll up the thick carpet on the floor to reveal a trapdoor. With a candle in my hand, I open the door and descend into the dark cavern below. It’s a cool, safe space –no spiders!– and when I am ready, I blow out the candle.That’s my inner room.”

From the looks on their faces, I *think* the concept has clicked now. It’s okay to transition to the next step.

We walk over to the church, and I prep them, “I am going to play two songs and then, we are going to sit in silence for three minutes. It might feel like a long time but I’d like you to think about YOUR inner room.” My nervous energy hasn’t dissipated. Something in me wants their approval, wants them to think I am cool. I push the arrow button on my outdated technology and the songs fill the space, a musical repetition of the phase: ”Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.”  

When it’s time for us to be silent, the seconds creep by, and the creak of the pews is a telltale sign of the girls shifting uncomfortably in their seats. When I glance around the open space, there is a definite awkwardness lingering in the air; a couple of the girls are giggling into their hands. I’m tempted to cut it short but keeping my eyes focused on the rounded edge of the pew in front of me, I push forward with the plan.

The time of silence blessedly comes to an end and when we walk back to the hall, the girls fall into small groups to chitchat. I trail behind and try to come up with a backup plan to fill time if needed.          

As we settle back into the session, I pose the question, “Would anyone like to share about their inner room?” My voice is upbeat and confident but my spirit fears that awkward silence will again fill the space. A moment passes.

But then, they begin.

“I was at the ocean, the noise of the water blocked out all the other noise.”

“I thought about the couch in my house…I knew my family was nearby but I was alone.”

“I thought about crawling inside the tabernacle in the church.”

“I imagined myself in bubble that was filled with love.”

My heart rejoices at their responses. “Thank you, Lord”, I shoot a silent prayer.

One brave girl pushes back. “I don’t get it. I don’t know what everyone is talking about.”  The blue streak in her long hair is apparent as her fingers seek out split ends.

I affirm her willingness to speak the truth of her experience and try to say it another way.  “You know that voice in your head that can be really mean, that tells you all sorts of nasty things about yourself?!? I am trying to suggest that there is a place inside of you where even that voice is quiet.  And that’s the place that you talk to God.”

Her eyes shift slightly and a flicker of impact is momentarily revealed. She continues to push back but now, it is for the sake of rebelling. “Yah well, I don’t get it.”

“That’s okay. Stay open to the idea and maybe some day it will make sense.”  

We push on to the rest of the day’s content, talking about how a sacramental worldview and silence help you to understand how you are to serve. Service is a theme the girls connect with easily and the conversation flows naturally. The tension I have been holding in my shoulders begins to release.

At the close, we gather around a candle and I invite everyone to share their prayer intentions out loud.  Their voices ring out in the silence as we make our requests known to God. I am troubled by the magnitude of what they carry.

“For my mom who is fighting for her life with cancer.”  

“For my friend who has to leave her foster home.”  

“For my cousin who is in jail.”    

That night, I open the door of my secret place, the rustic cabin of my mind.  The floorboards creak as I walk to the center of the space.  Lowering to my hands and knees, I roll the thick carpet and raising, stash it in the corner.  My fingers grasp the metal handle of the square door to reveal a wooden staircase and raising it, I descend, bringing the glow of a candle into the space momentarily. 

In the silence of my inner room, I recall each of their faces.  I sit on the cool of the floor in the dark chamber and I pray.

mary bio YAH

 

Flying Home for Christmas

Posted on by under Guest, Secret Places

The black suede coat my sister passed down didn’t fit me quite right, but it let me play the part of the cosmopolitan European with a little more believability, so I cherished it. I loved wearing it with my knit burgundy scarf tucked in at the collar. I loved how it trailed around my shins as I clip-clopped through airports with bags of gifts and luggage I bought to blend in.

I was flying home for Christmas. I remember changing planes in London, walking down the dismal beige corridor from whatever low-budget airline I’d just taken to the bright spacious British Airways international terminal where I would board my usual flight to Denver. I had been living abroad for a couple years and flying often enough to want to appear confident, worldly, and self-possessed as I navigated the airports of the world.

On this particular day, I got into the line at the gate and stepped up close — very close — to the person ahead of me, just as I was used to doing in post offices and grocery stores in eastern Europe. But I only stood there a moment or two before I started getting strange stares from my fellow passengers.

I was standing less than a foot behind the person in front of me, near enough for my long, ill-fitting coat to graze the back of their boots. All of a sudden I was painfully aware that I was applying my new-found eastern European personal space rules to a bunch of Americans.

Embarrassed, I stepped back a few feet and sheepishly looked around. Surveying the line, I realized I was surrounded by a field of North Face parkas, Denver Bronco hats and Colorado college team t-shirts. These were my people. We might have been in a boarding line in London, but these were westerners, used to wide open spaces and neighborly elbow room that spans miles.

Personal space is one of those secrets you learn only by trial and observation —by finding yourself on the receiving end of strange stares, or by being cut in front of when you habitually leave too much space between you and the postal clerk. My moment of embarrassment in applying the wrong personal space rules to the wrong context was a moment when I became aware I had left one place and arrived in another without realizing it.

Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out where you are.

3995564048_0d9bc6fb97_oFurthermore, airports are full of another type of ambiguous space, places of boundaries and thresholds. Doorways or hallways, corridors, waiting rooms, boarding lines —  these are not destinations in and of themselves. They are liminal, or in-between, places; places where we make transitions or where changes happen. 

Liminal spaces can be places of discomfort, anxiety, and self-consciousness, but also of freedom. What I experienced during my years of frequent travel was both the anxieties of transition, and, more significantly, the presence of God in those spaces. Liminal spaces were where God met me more intimately because I was in motion, open to surprises.

There was the Christmas morning flight when I spent an hour in on a layover, reading from Isaiah in the Bible laid open on the airport chapel table; or the times when the music in my earbuds would transform an ordinary security checkpoint into a holy sea of pilgrims. One flight, two missionary women were seated in my row and we spent nearly the whole flight sharing struggles and praying together.

And once, a German woman in a train station who saw me crying in a moment of frustration promised, “Morgen Besser,” which I understood as, “it’ll be better in the morning.” In the enchanted terrain of liminal space, I felt carried and carried along.

Morgen Besser. God has always spoken the most clearly and dearly in these secret spaces of travel, holding me as closely as baggage that might be lost along the way.  

When I think now about how vividly God met me in those turbulent times, I am tempted to think that I no longer have access to knowing Him with that particular intimacy.  Then I remember, life itself is a liminal space. I don’t have to be on an actual journey; there enough metaphorical ones to keep me alert. We’re all moving between birth and death, between one identity and another almost constantly, and God is still waiting to meet me in these in-between, unsettled places.

* * * * *

jenniferJennifer Stewart Fueston writes in Longmont, Colorado where she lives with her husband and two young sons. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania. This year, her poems have appeared in Windhover, The Other Journal and The Cresset.  Her chapbook of poetry entitled, Visitations, was published in 2015. She blogs very sporadically at jenniferstewartfueston.com and uses Twitter (@jenniferfueston) primarily during playoff football and for ranting during election season.

Photograph by Kevin Dooley

 

We Are Sardines

Posted on by under Secret Places

In the quiet, we huddle together and scold those who speak too often or above a whisper. I shift my weight carefully on the old wooden floors of the closet that protest with creaks at even the slightest movement.

Eight of us have piled into the utility closet off of the church parlor and are waiting for the rest of the “sardines.” Every muscle in my body tightens with the anticipation of voices or movement from the other side of the door. The must of old choir robes mixed with the generic old church smell that gets trapped in between the pages of pew Bibles and hymnals is particularlyphoto-1442706722731-7284acc0a2d7 dense in our close quarters.

A paper palm frond tickles my elbow, the trunk of its tree standing tall in a bucket of cement. This prop is one of many artifacts left from Vacation Bible Schools and church events where the sanctuary was transformed into a tropical Island or the Sydney Olympic games, depending on what the Sunday School curriculum companies were pushing that year.

There are only so many spots in the church building that can fit all the sardines attending youth group on any given Wednesday night. Each hider imagines they will find the new, most secret of spots. Everyone ends up in the same rotation of hideouts: the closet with the Christmas pageant outfits and fake floral arrangements, somewhere under the pews in the choir loft, or this closet off the parlor where we wait now for the rest of the kids to find us.

Once I join the cloistered youth group members, the act of hiding alerts my dormant primal instincts to survive. We all become prehistoric cave people, sheltering ourselves from a wooly mammoth, and we communicate with grunts and nudges in the darkness of our enclosure. We are alert, ready for fight or flight, knowing that at any second we many be startled by someone looking for the group hiding spot.

There is no real threat among the signs for long passed rummage sales and supplies used for church coffee houses, but for the thirty minutes the game lasts, we are in mortal danger. In the dark, in the secret place, we belong to each other. We are at the mercy of the loudest sneeze or the kid who clumsily knocks something glass off of the shelf.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Le Luxographe

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Le Luxographe

Next to me, a girl leans into her boyfriend, emboldened by the covering darkness and closeness  implied in the game of Sardines. One person finds a hiding place, and everyone who finds them must join the person in that spot. You win if nobody finds you, you lose if you’re the last one to find the group. In a couple of years, someone would wise up to the fact that shoving a bunch of horny teenagers into a small dark space wasn’t the best move  for promoting a culture of chastity and purity.

It’s very popular to bring your boyfriend to youth group. I had a grand total of one boyfriend during my middle school and high school years, and we were too shy to interlace fingers during the gathering time or to cuddle during movies at lock-ins. In the presence of my peers, my limbs and extremities became clumsy and sweaty, each finger unable to coordinate with its neighbor to reach out and show affection.

The boyfriends who came to youth group were often sullen, tall boys with baggy cargo pants and shirts silk-screened with bands whose faces were frozen in eternal screams. Some wore sweatshirts made from the material of Mexican blankets, while others had long hair that hung down over their eyes.

We were encouraged to bring our friends and boyfriends, an evangelism tactic as old as the tent meeting revivals held by our ancestors, or perhaps as old the four men who lowered their paralyzed friend to be healed by Jesus. All the same, friends and boyfriends were brought to church to hear the gospel or to play ultimate frisbee or to eat a shake made from a blended happy meal.

I often found excuses to slip away during the loud games that ended with youth group members accidentally putting their hands through windows or face planting on the cement floor. In these situations, I imagined that all eyes were on me, ready to notice the way my feet bowed out when I ran or the inevitable sweat circles under my armpits.

Sardines was the great equalizer.

We are in the dark, we are all the same, we must not make a sound. I am caught up in the energy of the game. In an era when I am most singled out and exposed, I am blissfully anonymous, another set of shadowed shoulders, a counted head as we wait for the next youth group member to join. All I needed to do was find my people, to wait and breathe, and be.

 

No One is the Boss of Us

Posted on by under Guest, Secret Places

You know how to light a match, don’t you?

I looked up at her and lied.

7716987146_ea11952132_oShe gave me the book of matches and watched me slowly draw the bud against the scratch. She grabbed it back, You’ve got to go fast, see? Boom! Zip! She laughed and gave me the lit match with her brown wrinkled hands.

Put it in that hole there. See the flames? You just lit the grill! Now you can cook steakettes whenever you want. I confidently dropped the frozen patties from the butcher paper onto the grate.

Little girls aren’t allowed to touch matches.

* * *

Alright. We can do whatever we want today! No one is the boss of us! We can swim, play cards, eat popsicles, eat your Reese’s! It’s the Lazy Lagoon! Anything goes!

I smiled and nodded eagerly. This was every 8 year old’s dream.

I’d been in my rainbow bathing suit since 6:30am, excited for the day at my beloved Gramma’s. We started by making her big circle king bed with the furry leopard bedcover. I watched her put on bright coral lipstick, pose in the mirror, and spray White Shoulders on her neck. Then we went downstairs to make Grampa breakfast in the iron skillet before he went to work.

Go get me a beer and we’ll watch my Cubbies. I got her an Old Style from the fridge next to the TV outside in her covered patio and joined her on the black porch swing for the late morning game. I leaned on her soft arm and we rocked.

After eating I wandered around her Southside Chicago backyard. There were big bright flowers that matched my Gramma’s clothes along the high white fences, and a deep cement pool. I jumped off the diving board.

You in the pool, Aimee? Be safe in there! Don’t let the sharks getcha!

She cackled, slapped her thigh, and shouted out the Jaws theme. I rushed to the ladder and decided to clean the pool. I knew how to work the long brush without hitting the electric wires above and how to skim bugs and petals out with the net. Then I floated on the raft with my hands behind my head.

Little girls aren’t allowed to swim alone.

* * *

After a while Gramma came out from under the patio, stretched, and clapped her hands.

Who’s ready to play cards? No Go Fish. No Old Maid. We’re playing Rummy, and we’re playing for blood. You’re going to have to win fair and square.

I scrambled out of the pool, my eyes twinkling.

She shuffled the deck three different ways and flicked the cards across the table. When I won a hand she shouted, Ah! You got me, kid. But no more! and she got up, walked around her chair, and declared, The Worm Has Turned! She cursed my cards. I cursed hers. We laughed so hard.

Little girls aren’t allowed to sass grown-ups.

Before cooking dinner she went to vacuum and I walked down the kitchen stairs to the basement bar.

I loved it down there surrounded by beer signs, fancy bottles, swizzle sticks, and napkins with jokes on them. I cleaned the counter and put out glasses. I asked imaginary guests about their families, just like Gramma would ask her dozen delighted siblings and their seventy kids when any of them came over. On earlier visits I learned the boring colors – vodka, gin, bourbon, wine – did not taste good. But liquors tasted great.

I poured myself some of the emerald green Crème de Menthe, my favorite. It coated and warmed my throat. I had another.

Little girls aren’t allowed to drink.

I woke up on the floor behind the bar with my Gramma leaning over me. Hey, you alright? Come on upstairs. I stood up dazed and followed her. In the kitchen, I ate some Reese’s peanut butter cups while she cooked dinner. She bellowed out a German song, acted out scenes from The Honeymooners, and danced with her spatula. I giggled and joined her. She told dirty jokes, too.

But don’t tell your Mom. She wouldn’t like it.

* * *

We watched the best shows of the 1980s at night: Family Feud, Archie Bunker, and Facts of Life, taking breaks for popsicles and HoHo’s. The vertical blinds lazily clinked against each other in the soft breeze. The room smelled like chlorine, cold cream, and Jean Naté.

After the news Gramma brushed her teeth and put on more lipstick.

In case I die in my sleep.

I laid awake between my Gramma and Grampa, licking chocolate off my smile in the dark. I had three more days to be a grown-up with Gramma. Then my Mom would bring me home and I’d have to be a little girl again

* * * * *

aimee-fritz-bio-picAimee Fritz is an introvert who delights in telling long, true tales about everyday absurdities in her suburban life. She finally believes in an unseen God, hopes to someday feel qualified to parent her kids, and is now allergic to every food she used to enjoy. Read more of her stories about world changers, souls, and big mistakes at familycompassionfocus.com

Matches photograph by Simon D.

 

 

The Church Who Never Locked Her Doors

Posted on by under Guest, Secret Places

Mt. Olive Methodist Church was just up the road from the house where I grew up, at the top of a steep gravel hill. Many a sticky summer day, my brothers and I would ride our bikes or walk the dogs to the church and back. If we rode our bikes, I had to be careful–the hill going down from the church entrance was a big one. Most of the time, I walked my bike down, while my brothers left me literally in their dust. The few times I worked up the nerve to ride my bike down the hill, I ended up falling.

Even though we weren’t members there, I always felt comfortable inside the church. Looking back, I realize why.

The Holy Spirit was there. For the Israelites in the wilderness, He appeared as a cloud by day and fire by night. The Church symbolizes His presence with water. A mighty wind. A whisper. In my childhood, the Spirit of God rested right by my side at Mt. Olive Church. The church never locked its doors, so it was always open to me. I know they say people make up the church, but those four walls meant church to me as much as any group ever has.

daughter-on-mtolive-steps-trI’d run up the four carpeted stairs to the red front doors. Opening these, you’d enter a small foyer. I always wondered who it was that thought to put the wooden swinging doors between the foyer and the sanctuary, but it must have been a smart individual who realized these doors wouldn’t make as much noise when a squirmy child has to be taken out of the service. My mom could have used doors like that, in our own church, with an unruly daughter like me.

I spent hours “playing church” at Mt. Olive. I’d sing and play piano from the hymn book and give mock sermons to whichever dolls I’d brought with me. There was always an altar call at the end. Later, that same altar called to me in some of my darkest moments as well. To this day, I do my most serious business with God at altars.

When my granddad succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease, I’d never lost a close relative, and I grieved at the altar of this little church. I spent some time reliving the memories I had of granddad’s farm. After a short while, I found the peace I’d been seeking. I knew Granddad didn’t have trouble remembering things any more; and if God had any fence posts that needed mending, I assured him he’d found the perfect helper.

Not quite a year later, my uncle died tragically in a car accident. I went to that same altar, shed more tears, and asked God to watch over my cousins, my uncle’s daughters, who would now grow up without a daddy. I wondered at how difficult that would be for them.

Years went by and I moved away from home. From time to time, I’d visit the graves of family members in the cemetery across the road from Mt. Olive, but I rarely went inside her doors, until one rainy day in April of 2003. For months, I’d been planning our outdoor wedding. We had the chairs rented, the tent raised. and I dreamt of the picturesque setting by the pond where we’d say our vows before God, family and friends.

The first crack of thunder woke me up at 5:30 in the morning.

From the couch where I’d slept that night, I heard Mom walking down the hallway of my childhood home and called, “Mom, isn’t it a great day for an inside wedding?”A few hours later we’d called the caretakers of Mt. Olive, who were also our neighbors. They had no problem with us moving our wedding ceremony indoors. We’d still be able to use the chairs and tent for our reception.

Soon I found myself having yet another conversation with God at the altar of that little church. I made a vow before Him to love and honor my husband. He responded with another crack of thunder! We all smiled, thankful to be safe and dry inside the church. It wasn’t our original plan, but I knew letting this church be a part of our special day just fit somehow.

I heard recently Mt. Olive had closed her doors. One of our neighbor’s kids has bought it, and I don’t know what his plans are for the building. She’s not a church these days – not physically. But the work God did there over the years surely lives on. I know it does in me.

* * * * *

tracirhoades2-2

Traci Rhoades lives in southwest Michigan, somewhere in a triangular section connecting Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids with all things Lake Michigan. She and her husband parent one daughter. They have dogs, cats, ducks, pigs and chickens–a number that is always changing, as farm animal counts tend to do. She enjoys watching sports, reading, cooking and all things Bible study. She is  a writer. When she first started blogging, she wondered about what unique voice she could bring, eventually landing on this one line: A country girl goes to church.

Chaos in the Garden

Posted on by under Time & Place

…therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” (Gen 3: 23)

We have been eating zucchini for weeks. It’s that time of year. At first, each squash picked from the garden is cherished and celebrated. Now, we are feeding them to the chickens.

Joy fills my mom’s voice when she speaks of the garden, and when she harvests, she coos all sorts of endearing things. “Well, little one, aren’t you a beauty!?!” and “Oh my goodness! I can’t wait to taste you!”

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My dad walks past the green beans, climbing in full splendor up the rack he built just for that purpose. The seeds were a bit old when we planted them weeks ago, and thinking they wouldn’t all make it, we sprinkled them close together. Now in full harvest, the plant has filled in thick and lush, bearing long twisty green beans on both sides of the planter. The soil is moist from the shade and regular waterings.

But then, hidden among the beauty of the plants, Dad hears the telltale rattle of a snake announcing its presence. The presence of danger is unavoidable.

The first order of business is to get the dogs inside. The younger of the two, Annie, hasn’t shown any restraint in recent encounters; she has attacked three javelinas as well as a porcupine. It’s better not to tempt her.

Dad yells at the dogs, using a very loud voice, commanding them to obey. “Annie!  Buddy!  Now!”

Hearing my dad’s stern voice is my first clue. It is out of character, not the normal end-of-the-day sound.

Soon, my phone rings and it’s Mom, who has now gotten involved.“Where are you? There is a snake in the green beans…”

I am confused and a little sarcastic, “You want me to come look at it?!?!” Snakes are fairly common to our desert property and I am working on something that seems more important.

“We need you. Come now.”

I join the snake hunt, complete with nervous energy and raised voices. The snake is moving around and is hard to keep track of.  

“Mary, go get something long…we need to figure out where he is.”

I return a few minutes later with a twenty-foot stretch of plastic pipe, long enough to keep a safe distance while trying to rouse a snake out of hiding. Mom has a hoe. Dad has a gun. We are ready.

At the far side of the planter, I poke the bottom of the plant, trying to push the snake toward my parents. “Please don’t shoot me,“ I yell, only half joking. I am out of their sight, and the wall of green beans will not stop a bullet.

With a half-hearted laugh and a touch of exasperation, Dad snorts. “Got it.”

Suddenly, the snake is on the move, unhappy with being poked and seeking safety. He crawls high into the bush, his movements shifting the leaves.

I use the pipe to lift a branch, and the snake’s crafty eyes and active forked tongue are now in plain view. Two feet off the ground, its body is wrapped around the planting rack.

Dad takes the shot, and 14102730_10154471164007943_7187211199284778346_nthe snake falls to the ground and continues to slither away.

Somehow, Dad now has the pipe and I have the hoe. Instinctively, I move in for the final blow, separating the snake’s head from the long body now wide open in the dirt.  It takes a few whacks to ensure the job is done.

This is the first snake that I have personally killed. For most of my life, I watched this kind of activity from a distance, fearfully.

The body continues to writhe and slither, the mouth bites the air, still on the attack. It is terrible to watch, this snake, seemingly alive but not. I feel the crashing sensation of adrenaline and the clammy feeling of sweat, but mostly relief that it is over.

We stand together, reliving the experience and dreading being the next one to have to pick green beans. I text my boyfriend to share the experience, and true to his roots, he texts back: “I can get $10 for the rattle.  $45 if you skin the snake.”

We laugh and, with another whack of the hoe, the rattle is separated. We briefly discuss the possibility of skinning it. It is a big, worthy skin. But none of us is interested in getting that involved.

The mood begins to lift and normalcy settles back in. My dad, anticipating the release of the adventure-seeking young dog, gathers up the snake carcass to bury where it won’t be discovered.

I pick up the rattle, the silvery scales electrifying my fingertips, and head toward the house. As he drives by on the golf cart, my dad jokes, “Wait, how much for the skin?!?” He is always interested in a deal.

I shake my head. “No thanks, Dad. I’m going inside.”

* * * * *

mary bio YAH