A Mother's Day Letter

Four generations . . . 

{The letter I wrote to Mother last year (2016) for Mother’s Day}

Dear Mother,

It takes no special occasion to say “I love you” and we both know how much that’s true both ways.  But today I just want to say it this way.

I’m sorry for the reason you are here in Tennessee already, but every day I thank God you are here.  I love being able to see you and to talk and laugh and cry and gripe with you, to know how human we both are and yet to see – shot through it all – God’s love and grace.

Thank you for your wisdom – all the more precious because you don’t pretend it isn’t hard to live it, hard to win it.  For all the grief I gave you when younger, you were always the Orion leading me back to the Lord you serve and love.

Thank you for your example of loving – family, friends, church, community.  You have given and given and given – and you still are, though you find it harder to see just now.  The staff there [at the assisted living home] love you, the people who come to visit you are blessed by your smile and your humor and the love that shines through you.  I want to be like you when I grow up!

Thank you for your love for Daddy.  You two showed me every day what love is – the ability to care for another more than for yourself, to set aside self to serve another, all that the Scripture tells us love is.  Not holding on to little irritations, but leaving them behind, working together to make a life of oneness.  I know you miss that so terribly, and knowing you will be with Daddy again will make it easier for me when it’s time to let you go.

Thank you for your good humor, and showing me how to be honest about difficulties with those close to you without losing the bigger perspective of God’s love, in it all, even in the hardest of it.

I have friends who have walked life with me, who have loved me and prayed for me, and I am grateful for them all.  But, Mother, you are the one who will always hold a place that no one else could fill – your love has shown me how to love, and your love will always be the most important guide on earth to me.  All that is good in me has come through you and Daddy and the One you have always pointed me to.

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Thank you, I love you, and happy Mother’s Day!

Mother and Daddy's wedding photo.

Children and Children-in-law and Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren . . . (and missing a fair number of them, too!)                                          

A Theology of Reading

I've been working at reading Alan Jacobs' A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love for several months now.  He's an excellent writer, but I don't have the background in philosophy that would make for easier reading, so I can only take it a bit at a time while working at absorbing it.  I'm sure I'm missing more than I'd like, but I do think I'm getting the main ideas.  I'll reread when I finish and would like then to give a review of the book.  Overall, he's making the case for reading with charity toward the text and the author, seeing books as gifts that should be offered and received in a spirit of love.  It's a wonderful book, one I hope to draw from as I read, write, and teach.


In the chapter I was reading yesterday, Jacobs offers this from Petrarch, who is explaining his frequent use of quotations from classical authors:

Nothing moves me so much as the quoted axioms of great men.  I like to rise above myself, to test my mind to see if it contains anything solid or lofty, or stout or firm against ill-fortune, or to find if my mind has been lying to me about itself.  And there is no better way of doing this -- except by experience, the surest mistress -- than by comparing one's mind with those it would most like to resemble.  Thus, as I am grateful to my authors who give me the chance of testing my mind against maxims frequently quoted, so I hope my readers will thank me.

Another reason to be well-read and pass on what we learn.

Lenten Reading

I'm going back through the collection of Mother Teresa's writings and commentary on them in Come Be My Light this year. The following quotations have caught my eye, for conviction and for encouragement.

Another nun, in the convent where Mother Teresa first served (as a teacher, among other duties) shortly after taking her final vows, wrote of her: "I notice that every day she tries to please Jesus in everything. She is very busy but she does not spare herself. [. . .] Admittedly, her deeds are entirely simple, but the perfection with which she does them, is just what Jesus asks of us."

Mother Teresa tells the sisters under her care: "Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love. . . . The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."

On her willingness to wait for the Calcutta mission to come into being despite her longing to start the work right away: "[B]ecause she had consecrated her life to God through a vow of obedience, she could proceed only with the approval of her superiors. To her their blessing was not a mere formality but a protection and assurance that God's hand was in her undertaking. Only their permission would give her the certainty that this call was indeed God's will and not some delusion."

On her own abilities for the work she was called to: "I feel sometimes afraid, for I have nothing, no brains, no learning, no qualities required for such a work, and yet I tell Him that my heart is free from everything, and so it belongs to Him, and Him alone. He can use me just as it will please Him best. To please Him only is the joy I seek."

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Sabbatical update: I am a much slower writer than I realized! Two essays ready to be set aside for awhile, and an interest in one for publication (have not received a deadline yet). Thanks to all for your encouragement and prayers.

Happy Birthday

Ninety years ago on Christmas Day my mother was born, to become the middle of three children. Six years later their mother died, and shortly after, their father was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent years in a TB sanitarium, not expected to recover. Mother and her two brothers were raised by her father’s mother (who had already raised twelve children of her own), with the help of some of their aunts. Each sibling, separately, also spent some time in the sanitarium, for treatment to prevent their also contracting the dreaded disease. They slogged their way through the depression selling eggs and taking in washing and feeding hobos who were willing to work for a meal. Their father was returned to them, well at last, but not until Mother was in high school. Her older brother, a pilot, died in World War II; her younger disappeared after the war until after her own children were gone from home.

Because to recognize a Christmas birthday was too much for a grandmother trying to carry three more children through the depression, Mother’s first birthday party was given her by us when I was in high school, a surprise I’m still proud of pulling off. And on this day when we celebrate the Saviour sent for us, I celebrate too the woman who led me to Him through her daily example of His sacrificial love. Her early life was anything but easy – yet it molded her into a woman who learned gratefulness, who learned to love her Lord and serve her neighbors all her life.

Mother and Daddy had their trials and tribulations too, of course, over 67 years, but she had chosen to live in joy from a young age and so they worked together to make a home that was a miracle of love. She loved Daddy first and best, always, and she gave to us, her two children, of all she was. She taught us to love books by reading to us, keeping full shelves in the study and in our rooms, taking us to the library weekly. She taught us to work as part of a family with our various chores, and she made sure we were part of family life in the kitchen, the sewing room, the garden, the grocery store. The church was our second home, where we joined choir and youth group and went to the dinners and activities and contributed in various ways to the missions and charities. She participated in the church circles and made items for the yearly bazaar and volunteered in the local food bank. She welcomed foreign students, from the university where Daddy worked, for the holidays; she put together food and gift baskets for the local poor; she created a “Santa’s Cookie Tree” on which we hung the gingerbread cookies we’d baked and decorated for the community to enjoy. She took me to the Plaza in Kansas City to window shop and look at fashions, then we picked out patterns and material to make my clothes, as nice or nicer than any we’d seen in the fancy stores. She cried over us, rejoiced over us, daily prayed over us.

Her brothers both are gone, her brothers- and sister-in-law too, and now Daddy. But, despite sorrow and loneliness (what could ever fill the emptiness after 67 years of marriage), she still chooses every day to live in joy. She remains active in her church, she still read voraciously, she cries and rejoices and daily prays over us her children and over her grand- and great-grandchildren. She chooses joy and so her love lifts me up every day of my life, as it has ever done.

(The rose is one from the bush Mother sent us one year.)

Eulogy

What I read at Daddy's memorial service: some of you have asked for this, and I've finally had time to get the changes completed. Thanks for caring!

Harold Eugene Blitch

3 August 1919 – 19 September 2010

“Dad has always been the strongest man I’ve ever known,” my brother remarked one day, and it was so hard to see him physically decline, after a lifetime of never slowing down.

Yet even now, Daddy’s strength is not really gone, not the important strength that has shaped, and will continue to shape, our lives. This strength cannot ever change, because it is the strength of love: love that derives from the love of God and has sustained his family and flowed out to friends and to innumerable people known and unknown.

Love of country led Daddy into the Air Force during World War II, and around the world flying transport. I grew up on stories of his flying “the Hump,” buying sapphires in India for Mother, dropping a monkey he’d adopted over the ocean because it insisted on trying to fly the plane, and the forced landing in a Brazilian jungle, where he spent his wedding day being paddled down the Amazon to a rescue ship . . . “It’s just what one does,” he said – serve your country in time of need.

That same sense of responsibility in his love of humanity led him to search for survivors in a massively destructive tornado in Waco and also to Mexico to help a sister church in their building and farming, as well as to his support of various charities over the years.

I’ve heard it said of many people that they never met a stranger. It was true for my daddy. There was never a person he couldn’t talk to, couldn’t develop a conversation with, couldn't make laugh. And so he had many friends over the years, friends he played bridge with, hunted and fished with, worked with, helped when they were in need.

But his love for us, his family, is of course the love that I know the best and that has been most important for all of us. Nearly 58 years of memories, plus the stories from his years before my birth, create a flood that is hard to choose from.

One of the few times I saw him cry was at his mother’s funeral, after helping his sister take care of her in her last years. He made the time and effort for fishing and camping trips with his younger brother, and was teasing and joking with his “baby sister,” as he always called her, into his final days.

Of course, I know him best as a daddy. The time he gave to Mike and me – hunting and fishing and Scouts and all those manly things he and Mike did together (most of which I couldn’t make myself love), but for both of us – setting up hay bales for archery and teaching us to shoot, flooding the garden for winter ice-skating, taking us to campus for sledding and skating when the pond froze hard enough, canoeing and camping trips, reading to us, playing croquet on summer evenings, chasing fireflies . . . simply being with us. As the consummate “daddy’s girl,” I shall always hold the memory of sitting curled up in his lap when he came home from work, and the knowledge of complete safety which has made it easier for me to trust my heavenly Father in my later years.

Oh, so many memories! But the most important gift Daddy gave Mike and me was his love for our mother. For 67 years, he made his wife the center point of his earthly loves and in so doing showed us what love is. I am sure I received my fair share of childhood spankings, but the only one I remember is the one that resulted from sassing my mother at the dinner table; the only time he ever spanked any of my children was for the same reason. He could tolerate a great deal from us – but absolutely not disrespect for the woman he loved. That was never tolerable.

He adored his grandchildren and great-grandchildren; even when he began having trouble remembering all those names, he knew them as family to be loved – just their pictures drew great joy into his eyes.

I am sure my daddy must have had his faults – he was human like us all – but this I have before me as clear as a cloudless noon: my daddy loved my mother, and therefore all is well in the world, no matter the suffering and brokenness that plagues us. Because nothing else, however pressing or difficult, is as important as this; only if Daddy could stop loving would the world end, and he cannot stop loving – even now . . . no, especially now, now that his love has been perfected in his Savior’s. What a privilege we have had.

God Is Still God

This is a piece I wrote in March for the women's ministry on our campus:

I’m a daddy’s girl. Even now I remember with longing the evenings when Daddy would come home from work, fix a daquiri for Mother and himself, and finally settle into an easy chair so that I could fling myself into the loving security of his lap as we all talked over the day. I knew that I was safe, that I could trust him, that I would always be loved and cared for.

Today, as he enters hospice care and we face the ending in this world of his long love for us, I struggle to trust the Father he emulated so well. The evil of death thrusts me back into questioning the goodness, the trustworthiness, the love of God. The irony that death itself was brought into the world by our refusal to trust Him seems lost on me.

My aunt called this afternoon. She’s facing the death of the last member of her extended family, a lonely reality. But she called to talk about my mother: “She’s a walking tower of strength,” she said; “I hope you appreciate her.”

And so I think about Mother’s life and all that she has endured: her own mother’s death when she was only six; raised by her widowed grandmother and various aunts while her father lived in a TB sanatorium for several years; getting by in the Great Depression; wondering on her intended wedding day if her fiancé – a WWII pilot – were even alive; her father’s death on her birthday one cold Christmas morning . . . and so much more, and now her husband of 67 years declining every day.

And she is indeed a tower of strength. Rather than dwell on suffering, she has set herself to serve and love others; service is the air she breathes. I have always known her to be a strong Christian, but it was only recently that she told me about having to move in high school when her father came out of the sanatorium, her resentment at being uprooted – and then two gifts: the three friends whom only death could separate, and the church where she found the love of God.

And so she learned what she has taught me every day of my life: look for the gifts and give of yourself. God never abandons us; He waits to meet us when we turn away from self to Him and to our neighbor. Suffering is merely the inevitable consequence of living; joy is what He makes of it all if we let Him. And so, as I have so many times over the years, I remind myself that – whatever of sadness and sorrow and evil may enter my life – my Father holds me in an even stronger love than that first fatherly love I knew, which, as strong as it has been, is only a shadow of its Giver’s.

Set Down in a Miracle

My beloved daddy has gone into hospice care, which may mean anything or nothing. His health is declining rapidly since a recent bout of pneumonia, however, and I am praying that he will still know me in early May. This is a meditation set off by a comment my brother made the other day when we were talking about the wonder of our parents' 67 years of marriage and profound love.

Set Down in a Miracle

The essential trait of Daddy’s life is his ever-consistent love, all of it founded in his love for his Lord. Love of country led him to sacrifice his hearing in the cockpits of transport planes in World War II and spend his intended wedding day in a Brazilian jungle where he’d had to make an emergency landing. Love of community drew him into the devastation of Waco, Texas, after a tornado strike to search for survivors and to remove bodies from the rubble. Love of his church placed him on boards and committees and sent him to a sister church in Mexico to teach horticultural techniques and help with construction work.

But the heart of his love has always been family. He met the love of his life in college, and his love for her has only grown stronger and deeper in the 68 years since. Mike and I both recall very vividly learning at quite young ages that the one thing Daddy would never tolerate was sassing our mother. The only spankings my own children ever received from him sprang from the same source: “I’ll put up with a lot,” was the message, “but don’t sass my wife.”

Theirs was a match made in heaven, and I don’t say that as a cliché. No doubt there were occasional tensions we knew nothing of, and growth in those first years that all couples must experience, but mostly we saw two people who desired above all else to serve each other, not to be served. Daddy was perhaps rare among men in his generation in his willing help with child care, including diapers and drool. Each has said of the other so many times, meaning it fully, “What would I do without him, without her?”

Mike and I grew up bathed in this love. For years, of course, we were mainly aware of its benefits to us, of how we ourselves were loved. Daddy teased us, taught us, disciplined us, encouraged us, made us laugh. He and Mike hunted and fished and canoed and fixed cars and built a house. For me, his introverted and bookish child, Daddy listened with seriousness, gave me a horse and riding lessons, a correspondence course in writing, a college education with a trip to Spain thrown in, and simply showed me every day that I had a protector and advocate. I felt safe, always, no matter where I was. My gravest fear was to disappoint him.

But when we grew up, Mike and I began to realize that the reason Daddy loved us as he did, showed his love so richly, was because he loved our mother first. She truly has been the heart of our home, because she is the heart of Daddy’s love. He loves her so much that his love for her could do nothing but flow over to the children given them as a result of their love.

Because he has always put Mother first, we learned to respect as well as love her, our love enriched by being not merely sentimental. Because he has loved Mother first, we have seen sacrificial, unconditional love every day. And Mother’s return of that same sacrificial love, putting Daddy first, serving and loving him and therefore serving and loving us, the children of their love, strengthened the lesson into a compelling picture of how we should then live.

Mike and I were talking about all this on his recent birthday. Sixty-seven years of love lived out so beautifully, without regrets or acrimony of any sort, giving and giving to each other and all around them – a miracle, surely. So I said, “We’ve had the privilege of seeing that” – but Mike corrected me. “No,” he said, “We were set down right in the heart of it” – set down in a miracle that has sustained us all our lives, even in those moments – or years – when we’ve rejected or disbelieved its lessons for ourselves, always drawing us back and reminding us: love is real.

Daddy will be leaving this earth in the next months, but his love will never leave. It will live on in his family, from his beloved wife to his twenty great-grandchildren, who will know his love through their parents, the children of his children, whom he has also loved. Love is never lost, and I am eternally grateful to have been set down in the miracle of its reality for all of my life.

"Caged Bird" redux

I read Luci Shaw’s poem “Caged Bird” in a talk I gave on suffering recently. Unable to spread his wings to the sky, forced to “sort millet” instead of seeking and delighting in “the sun-filled / film and fire / of insect wings, / [or] worm's wry / juice,” his “trinity of claws” gripping the cage’s steel perch instead of tree’s rough bark, the bird still sings. In fact, he discovers how to

poem

his stunted

narrowness

in one long,

strong,

ascending,

airborne, sun-

colored wing

of song.

He creates beauty from his suffering – perhaps because of his suffering.

Someone asked if the poem wasn’t rather existential in nature, the song surely meaningless because it doesn’t liberate the bird from his cage – therefore it must be an exercise in futility, no matter how beautiful. I responded as best I could on the spot: the point isn’t to escape from suffering; we can’t escape suffering in this life. The point is what we do with the suffering: do we give in to it in bitterness or do we create beauty – allow God to create beauty in us – from it? Do we draw closer to Him and thus love others better; do we offer beauty to the world that invites them to look to our God in their own suffering?

A suitable response in the moment, and true. But as I reflected on the question later, I realized a more profound answer: the creation of beauty in suffering does indeed liberate us – it liberates us from the prison of self-pity and self-absorption. It cannot, however, liberate us from the cage of circumstances – of the suffering itself. Of course, particular occasions of suffering end; but they don’t end because we create beauty from them. After all, many occasions of suffering never end in this world; they only end when we come into Christ’s presence in the next. And suffering ends as often for those who hate God as for those who love Him. Yet extraordinary beauty is created by many who suffer continually until the freedom of their death. They create beauty not because they have been freed from suffering, but because they have been freed from self.

I keep thinking of my mother-in-law. The painting I chose to hang in my office tells her story: gloriously flaming canna lilies burst from swirled purple-black soil, as the painting itself was born from the twin sufferings of cancer and heartache. She suffered to the moment of her liberation in death. Yet she created profound beauty, in her art and in the art of her life, because of that suffering – not in spite of, but because of. Oh, it’s true she had always loved well, but in those last years her love became focused, poignant, every detail sharpened in a joy that attended to the littlest things – a loaf of just-baked bread, a glass of freshly squeezed juice – as cause for delight and care, that drew us to her as moths to the flame to be warmed and then invited, in our turn, to offer warmth to those around us.

Sonny, in James Baldwin’s story “Sonny’s Blues,” says of a street singer in Harlem, “It struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through – to sing like that. It's repulsive to think you have to suffer that much.” Yet he finds eventually that this is the calling of the artist – and, ultimately, of all of as we create, by the grace of God, the art of our lives. Suffering can’t be avoided, and it is indeed repulsive – it is a result of the Fall – but it won’t drown us if we step into it in faith and make something of it, something of beauty that touches the lives of all who experience it and reminds them that joy and triumph are realities, too, even within the suffering itself.

The cage of circumstance cannot be torn away; we cannot liberate ourselves from suffering. But we can – by God’s grace – be liberated from the prison of the self when we decide to create a psalm of praise.

On Being Right vs. Loving

Our pastor this morning preached on I Corinthians 13. As he talked about the pre-eminence of love in the Christian life, I was reminded of a conversation I was privy to many years ago.

Two of the tutors in the writing center I directed at the time were both Christians of the same denomination. One -- I'll call him Larry -- planned to become a pastor, and was looking forward to seminary the following year. He dressed neatly, wore his dark hair in a respectable mature cut, always arrived on time and remembered to do the paperwork. He was a good tutor.

The other -- I'll call him Steve -- was also a good tutor. He tended at times to forget things, like what time he was supposed to arrive for his consultations or to fill out the paperwork at the end of a session. His blond hair was shaggy, his clothes poor-student-eclectic. I don't think he yet knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. But the students he worked with always asked for him on repeat visits.

Larry and Steve often argued theology when there were no clients, until I'd set them about other tasks. One Friday evening, waiting for the day to officially end and knowing full well no one would walk in at that hour for help, I let them go at it for their last half hour. I don't recall the subject of the argument -- some important, though I think not essential, point of theology.

Larry was indisputably right. From both Scripture and his church tradition, his argument was accurate and well-reasoned. Steve's rebuttals were so wrong-headed they made me cringe a little. But I walked home that evening knowing that if I were in trouble, I'd far prefer to have Steve, along with his error-filled theology, by my side, than Larry with his indisputable truth.

The reason is simple: Steve loved people. His resistance came from a misunderstanding of the Scripture that made him think Larry's interpretation was harsh and cold and uncaring. And Larry couldn't convince him otherwise -- because Larry couldn't understand Steve's care for people and therefore couldn't address it, couldn't explain his argument so that Steve could see that it didn't mean what he thought. Larry cared only, in the end, about being right -- and so could not frame an argument that showed the mercy and love of the doctrine about which they argued, because he himself had no understanding of mercy and love.

I've often wondered what became of Larry. I hope that he learned love, and that the lesson wasn't too crushing. I hope that he didn't finish seminary and take a parish to be a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal, a man who has all knowledge but no love. I worry less about Steve, despite his lack of purpose. I hope he came to understand how the Lord's infinite love is demonstrated in that and other doctrines he struggled with; I hope he found out what he wanted to be and became it. But I'm as sure as one can be that at least he's given hope to others along his way.

Love Makes Us Wise

Tony Esolen has another excellent post up at Mere Comments today, "I Want to be on that Man's Team." It's about baseball player Albert Pujols, who is apparently a truly great player (about which Inscapes readers will know that I can attest nothing): "I only want to be remembered as a man who loved the Lord," Pujols told a Sports Illustrated reporter. We should all desire to be remembered this way, because, as Tony writes, "the love of Christ -- Christ's love for us, and our love for Him -- is the most remarkable thing in the history of the world."

The gospel is not first of all or mainly for the philosophers and theologians, Tony asserts, though of course we need doctrine, "if only to keep certain riffraff off the streets." The gospel is too complex for even such a brilliant intellect as a Thomas Aquinas and yet at the same time simple enough for any little child to understand. And it is love, he says, that makes us truly wise:

"And all these simple people who love Christ, who may not be able to persuade a single skeptic that God even exists, know what they know by their love, and are far the wiser for it. They are my brothers and sisters, my teammates, in the oldest and most glorious communion the world has seen; a communion that has brought the world the odd idea that only in love is there freedom; because Truth has said so."

I was reminded by this post of a constant tension I find in my own thinking -- the mysteries and intellectual complexities of Scripture and tradition make my mind reel at times and I feel almost despair: how can I ever know what is true amid all the confusion of these varying interpretations and depths and layers of meaning . . . and then I am brought up short by some simple thing -- a song, or a hug from a friend, or a moonrise -- and I think, it's all so very, very simple: "Jesus loves me, this I know / for the Bible tells me so."

I tend to think of myself as an intellectual, if a rather minor one, and it is good to be reminded that my intellectual grasp of anything is beside the point. Not unimportant or worthless, but merely beside the point. For without love, all my knowledge is at best a clanging cymbal.

Tony says it much better; read his whole post .

Thirty-Four Years

January 4 is our 34th wedding anniversary. Sometimes it feels like a whispered breeze, barely noticed before gone. Often it feels more like a very long time, until I remind myself it’s just over half the years my parents will have been married next month. It hasn’t been easy; it hasn’t looked much like what either of us envisioned the day we walked down the aisle.

But we’ve grown, sometimes quickly, often slowly. The apostles told Jesus that if a man couldn’t divorce his wife then it would be better not to be married. But it’s that very commitment that can force two people to decide that learning to get along is better than a lifetime of misery. I thank God for the commitment demanded by Him that has taken us through hard times to this place of contentment with each other, commitment that didn’t allow us to consider anything but faithfulness "till death do us part."

Mainly we’ve learned a little about the nature of love. Sure, romance and fireworks are nice. But love is so much deeper. Love is the placing of the beloved above the self, desiring his or her good above one’s own, and the willingness to sacrifice for that truth. No one does it all the time; I do it less well than most, perhaps. But we have both learned something of this over time; I am privileged to be loved well by the man who committed himself to me.

It is this sacrificial love within iron-clad commitment that allows true affection to grow. Every time one puts the other first, it creates a deeper respect and concern than already existed; it reminds one that the other is a bearer of the image of God as well as a needy fallen man or woman – and both those identities require respect and concern, require the love of God Himself placed within us through the sacrifice of the Son and the seal of the Holy Spirit. And this is the genesis of affection that shows itself in constant little ways each day -- a blanket in the middle of the night, a note of encouragement, a glass of water on a hot summer day, a simple smile at a shared memory . . .

I am grateful for these thirty-four years.

Love is . . .

“Love is what you go through with someone” – James Thurber

Unknown saints quietly work their magic in homes across the country, often exhausted and sad and frustrated, but choosing to love and care for those whose lives have been bound up with theirs, despite often being misunderstood, lashed out at, and finally not recognized at all. They are the loving and tireless caretakers of spouses, siblings, or parents with dementia.

I hate that word, “dementia.” It has such strong connotations of insanity, and yet it is not really insanity as we think of it in popular culture. True, the person with dementia is “out of his mind” to the eye of the observer; but the causes are solely, purely physical: there is as yet no hope of recovery from use of medication, and – because there is no psychological element – there can never be hope of help from psychiatric treatment. I would just say “Alzheimer’s,” which doesn’t have those connotations, but all dementia is not Alzheimer’s, as my father’s is not; different causes exist, and the progression is not exactly the same, and it seems to matter to be precise.

“Vascular Cognitive Impairment” is his condition: dementia caused by a long series of “mini-strokes” – TIAs – that in themselves don’t leave the kind of lasting damage of a major stroke (the typical loss of muscle use, for example, on one side of the body), but over time damage the brain so that dementia occurs. (They are also likely precursors to a major stroke, of which my grandmother, Daddy’s mother, died when she was 90; Daddy will be 89 this summer.)

Dementia begins slowly – perhaps a struggle with numbers or more forgetfulness than comes with normal aging. But its progression is inexorable, and it is surely one of the most painful processes to watch a loved one endure. The puzzled look of a spouse who doesn’t seem to know you; questions like “Do we have any children?”; remarks about “my first wife” when you have been married for 63 years . . . The anger and frustration when you must take away the car keys or insist on a certain diet or give reminders to eat slowly or use the bathroom . . . The fear and sadness and shame in his or her eyes . . . The knowledge that this man or woman you love will never be better, and only worse is to come . . .

And yet these saints who suffer in seeing their loved ones suffer continue to love, to remember what was and to assure dignity despite the loss of return. They learn to speak patiently, to bring beauty, to give respect, to elicit laughter as often as possible. They know that love is not what they receive, but what they give, and they give without reservation. When they are weary and longing for a good night’s sleep, they rise without complaint to help a spouse to the bathroom; when they are berated, they give a hug and set aside the unintended hurt; they never fail to say “I love you” again and again, to offer the reassurance of speech and touch so desperately needed by the one who is losing his or her understanding and grasp of reality.

I stand humbled before these quiet, unknown saints and pray that I may learn from them the grace of giving.

The Generosity of Centered Love

for June, who has loved me

Some 34 years ago, I happened to work in the curriculum library at The University of Kansas, reshelving and rearranging and doing whatever projects the director needed me to do. A strikingly beautiful woman with a soft Southern accent happened to be a doctoral student under the director, with a desk in the library’s office area. Her inevitable kindness, her ready smile and laugh won me instantly – and one day she invited her younger son to take us out to lunch at Pizza Hut, thereby (not quite unknowingly) selecting her daughter-in-law.

From the first, June considered me a daughter, loving me neither less nor differently than she loved her own children. And I have always called her “mom,” because she immediately became a second mother to me, as precious as my own.

Sometimes I envied her energy and her talents. She could make anything on a sewing machine from a simple skirt to complex valanced drapes. She could cook anything from scratch and taught me to love simple beans and cornbread as well as exotic tabuli. She canned and froze and dried the produce of the family farm and in her children’s youth had driven the tractor, planted trees, and helped put out the fire that younger son inadvertently started in the outhouse. Her eye for beauty ensures that nothing in her various homes has been accidental or happenstance, and each one has inevitably been both elegant and comfortable, truly home to all who step across the threshold. She taught economics and home economics at Texas Women’s University and she is an artist and a landscaper and a homemaker par excellence.

But I understood immediately that she didn’t expect me to be like her, that she realized that my upbringing, my talents, my preferences and abilities, even my lesser store of energy are uniquely mine and to be valued as such. Never have I felt a moment’s slightest disappointment from her, but only encouragement to follow my own paths, to excel in being the woman I was created to be. And while I’ve not, sad to say, learned to sew or cook or decorate my home in the complex ways she does, I have learned from her anew the most important lesson my own mother has always impressed on me, not by speech but by example.

For Mom generously, fiercely loves people, with a deep loyalty and a vulnerability that draw and enfold. All that she does arises from this love. When she bakes bread and prepares a lovely pot roast and a sumptuous dessert, it is an offering of time and love to those who will share it, as is the time given to teach her grandchildren to sew and draw and paint, showering love along the way. Her home opens vistas of quiet beauty where guests feel free to relax, from the cushioned window seat and afghans in the den and deep leather couches in the living room to scented soaps on the bathroom sinks and lush down pillows on the beds. Her paintings – like the two I see each time I glance up from this writing – greet the viewer with a profusion of soft colors that draw the eye into a centered depth of beauty that is like the depth of her own centered love, the theme of all her interior decoration, even to simple trinkets hanging in a window.

One year, we arrived at Mom’s the Monday morning before Christmas, racing ahead of sleet and snow, the day sagging about us, grey and drizzly. Bringing dishes to the sink after lunch, I noted the several multi-colored, multi-shaped, flat pieces of glass hanging in the kitchen window that had been there since I could remember. Pretty, I thought, and didn't notice them again. Wednesday dawned bright, the ordinary sun dazzling after nearly a week's hiding behind the wintry grey. Around mid-morning, I started from the den toward the laundry room -- and was arrested by vivid rainbows reflected on the white walls, a brilliance that abruptly stilled my teeming mind. After catching my breath, I approached the window to find their origin, and, for the first time ever, I saw among the colored baubles two small, clear glass pieces: a ball and a teardrop, each with dozens of facets cut into the surface, joyfully refracting the sunlight into radiant beauty.

Simple elegance – yet with depth, richness, brilliance like the love of the woman who, with her instinct for beauty, hung the glass in that perfect place to provide moments of sudden delight. This is her way – not extravagance but quiet gestures that never waver, never halt, but need only the light of our gratefulness to break into beauty enough to delight the universe.

The Little Way

Michael Novak writes about Mother Teresa in the 24 September National Review, in an article called "Way of Darkness." Therese of Lisieux, often called "Therese of the Little Way," was Mother Teresa's patron saint; Therese's autobiography is The Story of a Soul, out recently in a new translation which I am enjoying very much.

Novak summarizes Therese's "Little Way" in his article:

The kernal of Therese's teaching is often called "the little way," meaning that no Christian is too humble or too insignificant to follow it. No matter what spiritual darkness you find yourself in, choose as your North Star a tender love for the persons that life's contingencies have put next to you. Do not go looking for more fascinating neighbors to love. Love those who are nearest. You cannot see God, even if you try. But you can see your neighbor, the tedious one, the one who grinds on you: Love him, love her. As Jesus loves them. Give them the tender smile of Jesus, even though your own feelings be like the bottom of a bird cage. Do not ask to see Jesus, or to feel him: That is for children. Love him in the dark. Love for the invisible divine, not for the warm and comforting human consolation. Love for the sake of love, not in order to feel loved in return.

I just got Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light yesterday. She lived her patron saint's "little way," by all accounts; I am awed already by the first few pages. Her humility and her absolute, profound love for Jesus and desire for His glory shines forth in her letters and what others say about her. If we gave one-hundredth the love that such people do, what might the world look like?

On Loving One's Neighbor as Oneself

Recently I was reading one of those books that tells us we must first learn to love ourselves, then we can figure out how to love our neighbors. I've always taken issue with this progression.

The Lord says: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

He doesn't say, "Love yourself so you can love your neighbor."

The distinction seems obvious to me. He assumes that we love ourselves, and therefore we already know how to love others: do to them as we would have them do to us.

Where this tends to get hung up is when we witness self-loathing in some people. "Oh, I'm a rotten person, I hate myself, the world would be better off without me." Surely this person must learn how to love himself before he can be expected to love others.

But I think this is not really the issue, not at heart. I think the person who claims to loathe himself is actually mired in a kind of improper self-love, an inversion of arrogant egotism. I say this, by the way, as one who has been through -- and still goes through far too often -- the self-loathing litany.

Consider: the egotist obviously loves himself improperly because he thinks too highly of himself. He shows off in one way or another, drawing attention to his wonderful self and expecting everyone to bow before his brilliance. What is this but an inordinant self-absorption?

The one who claims to loathe himself may actually think too little of himself. Or he may actually think quite highly of himself: oh, poor me, nobody appreciates me the way I should be appreciated. Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll go into the garden and eat worms. In any case, his self-loathing is a means of drawing attention to himself, of expecting everyone to cater to him, to feel sorry for him, to bow down to his neediness by telling him how wonderful he really is. What is this but another kind of inordinant self-absorption, a self-love that is just as improper as that of the egotist?

In Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis says that the humble person doesn't go around thinking of himself as less than he is (a talented musician doesn't pretend to be untalented or a pretty woman to be plain), trying to make everyone think he isn't arrogant. The humble person does his work for the Lord and his neighbor the best he can and is unconcerned with himself. If he does his best with what he has, he is content. If someone else does better, he is content. His focus is not on himself but on the Lord and others.

I'm also reminded of Lewis's discussion of gluttony, in which he points out that the person who refuses to eat what is put before him, demanding "less" and putting everyone out by "not wanting so much" or "so rich" food, is just as much a glutton as the person who stuffs himself -- because he has made food his idol. It seems to me that the self-loather is as much an idolator of self as the egotist, in a similar way as the dainty glutton is an idolator of food.

The cure is the same for the egotist and the self-loather: stop focusing on the self. It will not help the egotist to stand in front of the mirror saying 1000 times "I am not the center of the world," nor will it help the self-loather to stand in front of the mirror saying 1000 times "I am a person of infinite worth." What they both need is to get out from in front of the mirror!

That doesn't mean that some salutary understandings of value (I am of value to the God who gave His Son for me; but I am of no more value than my neighbor) aren't ever in order. But I have found that for me this comes most clearly when I stop studying about my value and focus my attention on the Lord and on serving the neighbors He brings into my way. When I do this, I generally find that without realizing it I have stumbled into a balanced understanding of my own value -- and also that it really doesn't matter that much anymore because I'm doing what I was designed to do in the first place.

On Being Somewhere

Thoughts after a conversation, but preaching to myself . . .

One has to be somewhere. And that somewhere, as a general rule, has to include other people. People are, of course, imperfect by definition, so this means our "somewhere" will often be uncomfortable and unsatisfactory.

This is called "life."

God calls us to live this life as well as we can, in His strength and by His grace, extending forgiveness and love and compassion and acceptance to others, as we desire these for ourselves -- and, not incidentally, as we have received them from Him. This is how we learn to be like Him.

May we learn to make our "somewheres" better places for our having been there.

Quiet Companion

I regularly read a number of posts at a Christian college blogring. A few are genuinely, deeply thoughtful and I appreciate and learn from them. They mostly depress me, however, just because so many tend to be completely superficial -- "so I got up and had breakfast and skipped class and went to lunch . . ." -- you know the type. But of course others are more serious, young people writing about what they hope and dream and seek for. Some of these disturb me because they reveal the completely worldly values of folk who should be moving out of these into Christ's values. Others disturb me because the writers simply seem so lost and confused.

This morning I finally realized the main feature that bothers me about so many of these -- the absolute focus on self. Even when writing about a desire for the spiritual, it is a desire for spiritual emotion: I want to feel this, feel that, feel the other; I want God to show me this, give me that. It's all about me.

That, of course, is human nature in a nutshell, exacerbated by the self-absorbed culture that surrounds us. I've been there, still go there far too often. But if we want to know Him, then we need to seek Him -- Him, not some experience we want Him to give us. We need to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength -- and I no longer believe that has anything to do with how we feel at any given moment. Rather, it is a decision to walk in the Truth of His nature, of His salvation, of His Lordship, whether we feel anything in particular or not. (Of course, it is best to do this cheerfully and willingly, not begrudgingly. But, despite the many people I admire who say the opposite, I think it better to do the right thing out of obligation rather than excuse sin because I don't feel like being righteous. At the least, it builds good habits.)

Oh, I long to feel good, too! I can't say how many times I've begged for just a taste of that abundant life He promises. But I think I am beginning to understand that, as C. S. Lewis demonstrates in Surprised by Joy, we can't find some kind of emotional experience by seeking it out and focusing on it. Rather, the knowledge of joy comes as a complete and marvelous surprise when we are absorbed in simply living our lives in His Truth -- absorbed not in ourselves but in Him, the world He created, the others He places in our path.

I used to beg, to plead, for a taste of joy. I am now often startled to find joy a quiet companion along the way, most noticeable when I seek it the least.

Cheap Grace: Worth What It Costs?

Death on a Friday Afternoon is Neuhaus's meditations on the final seven "words" of Christ on the cross. The first -- on the statement "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" -- begins by urging us, in Neuhaus's gently eloquent way, not to leap forward to Easter but to "stay awhile" at Good Friday, reflecting on the fallen Lord and our complicity in His death.

He writes, "after such a separation [ours willfully from God] there can be no easy reunion. [. . .] Spare me a gospel of easy love that makes of my life a thing without consequence."

I had not, I think, considered reconciliation in quite this way. I have intellectually understood that there needs to be payment for "that which has gone wrong" and that Christ could make that payment because He was the only one who had not gone wrong Himself.

And I have intellectually understood that my going wrong -- my sin -- was the problem that I could not fix myself, requiring that I make the ultimate payment, death, or that another, who was able, pay for me.

But I hadn't thought about how "cheap grace" makes my life of no value. Sin cannot be merely overlooked as if it had not occurred; a penalty commensurate to the sin must be paid; it must cost someone something to fix the problem.

"If bad things don't matter," Neuhaus writes, "then good things don't matter, and then nothing matters and the meaning of everything lies shattered like the cookie jar on the kitchen floor." And earlier, "Spare me the sentimental love that tells me what I do and what I am does not matter."

And so with all of life. When I shrug and ignore the violation of rules I have created for the good of my children or of my students, I am telling them, "What you do is not really that important." And when they accept my cheap grace, they have accepted a lie about themselves -- that they are not worthy -- and a truth about me -- that I do not care enough about them to show them their worth.

Food for thought. As God has cared for me, may I discipline myself to care enough for those He has placed under my stewardship to show them His love in His ways.