W is for Whole

A whole defies mathematics.  It adds up to so much greater than two halves, especially in hearts.  Just the added “w” makes it the opposite of hole.  Where a whole is given, there can be none of the empty void of hole.  A whole is full and complete–the thing in its entirety.  A whole lends importance to anything it touches.  I should do, see, love with my whole, or not at all.

S is for Squiggles

Squiggles are squeal-fueled giggles–the language of toddlers who haven’t quite learned the words.  Some sneak out, burst, or even explode.  They have an uncanny power to multiply without effort.  They are joy that needs no articulation

C is for Cobwebs

Cobwebs are what creep up in corners when you’re not paying attention.  A moment of shame. A mistake. Something you can’t remember or can’t forget.  They are sticky and catch things that brush against them by accident.  It helps to sweep out your cobwebs.

Peace on Earth

November 08

Toothy Still Life

“Unspeakable”

Cultural Context: The word used by Peter Geren, secretary of the U.S. Army to describe the sights seen by Private James Hoyt on April 11, 1945 when he was one of four American soldiers to discover the Buchenwald German concentration camp.  Mr. Hoyt died on Monday, August 11 and was the last surviving member of the four man team.

“Unspeakable” was right, for the CNN news account/tribute to Mr. Hoyt’s heroism indicated that he had kept his involvement in the liberation secret from many he knew for much of his life.  The story indicates that Mr. Hoyt still suffered nightmares and attended post-traumatic stress disorder support meetings for veterans 63 years after his experience.  Mr. Hoyt had begun to share his memories with author Stephen Bloom.

From the article:

“It’s important that we don’t allow ourselves to lose him,” Geren told CNN by phone. “It’s the memory of heroes like James Hoyt and the memories of what they’ve done that we must ensure that we keep alive and share with the current generation and future generations.”

Captain Fredrick Keffer, commander of the small mission to locate Buchenwald later wrote:

“Memories of evil get erased, for life must go on, and new generations cannot be locked in the past. But they would do well to remember the past.”

It was interesting to me that when army files about the liberation were located, Mr. Hoyt, who was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and the recipient of the Bronze Star, had been asked to account for his greatest achievement.  He listed his accomplishment as the 1939 Johnson County Iowa Spelling Bee champion.  The word he spelled to win, ironically was “archive.”  As his story, his sights are now archived, I’m confronted by our need to speak the unspeakable.

We don’t want to.  We want to “lose” the memories, to push them away, to look away from ourselves and the realities of who humans are.  But, history shows us–today’s media shows us–that there is no depth to the unspeakable that man can and will perpetrate on man.  God tells us through the prophet Jeremiah that the human heart is “more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (jeremiah 17:9)

I have always been fascinated by history and mystified by the surreal circumstances of the Jewish Holocaust of World War II.  The accounts are overwhelming in their depravity.  But, they are not unlike countless other situations in the history of our world.  And, it is not easy to point a finger and single out perpetrators over there somewhere in the great category of “someone else”–not when you see the seemingly endless reports of bizarre and cruel crimes that grace the rotating “featured stories” of today’s news.  For all the writing and teaching on our race’s “evolution” toward the best of ourselves, we remain depraved.  And, if “evolution” is man’s way, a chance betterment of our species, then we are doomed to depravity.  For, survival of the fittest inevitably means the destruction of the weaker.  Even the rules of the theory of evolution don’t allow for the possibility that our deceitful and sick hearts can be made truthful, healed, compassionate toward one another.

Beyond the hopelessness of our own evolution, there is a cosmic intervention available.  It’s not by chance.  It’s not accidental.  It’s a desire by a Creator God to take his beloved handiwork back to the communion of Eden.  It’s the new ancient reality that all is not lost, and we can change.  We can BE CHANGED.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes… so you will be My people, and I will be your God.” (ezekiel 36:26-28)

12th Day of Thanksgiving: We Gather Together

We gather together
to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens
His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing
now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His name,
He forgets not His own.

Beside us to guide us,
our God with us joining,
ordaining, maintaining
His kingdom divine;
so from the beginning
the fight we were winning;
thou, Lord, wast at our side,
all glory be thine!

Lyrics: Nederlandtsch Gedencklanck; trans. by Theodore Baker 
Music: 16th cent. Dutch melody; arr. by Edward Kremser (1838-1914)

Curveball

“November resembles a curveball.  Just when you think you know where the ball will go over the plate it shifts on you and you’re swinging wind.”

~ Outfoxed by Rita Mae Brown

Ornament

“When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appelations.  He called her Eva, that is to say, the Mother of All.  He did not style her wife, but simply mother,–mother of all living creatures.  In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of a woman.”

~ Martin Luther

The Vendors

as I come from the train, they all appear
offering their wares to see and buy:
a cup of hurry, a bag of fear,
a handful of nothings, a schedule to apply.

I stand at their carts distracted and drawn
from my chosen route to the vendor’s stand
I spend all I have on what is shown
and go my way with my nothings in hand.

along the path there’s a merchant I meet.
a craftsman, he too has items to sell:
a coat made of love, jewels of peace,
shoes full of wisdom, treasures avail.

I stand at the treasures, empty, unkept.
I long to buy, but I’ve nothing to spend.
I stopped at the vendors, and all that is left
is a fist full of nothings piercing my hand.