In Hymns

A long time ago, the girls and I would sit on the couch together and learn hymns. Somewhere along the line we stopped. Not sure why.

Recently, Sara told me she misses those times.

So this Sunday, I began a revival of the practice.

It fits very nicely with my focus for this year: music. And we are going to learn about the background of the hymns too.

We began yesterday with Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Sonia, my Littlest, sweetly researched the writer's life. We learned that Robert Robinson began as a barber; became a minister in Cambridge, England; wrote this hymn to go along with a sermon; and later fell into spiritual struggle and sorrow.

One day, many years after composing the hymn, Robinson met a woman in a carriage, who was humming his song. She asked how he liked the hymn. He began weeping and said, "I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."

Sonia also introduced us to John Wyeth (born in Cambridge, Mass), who added Robinson's hymn to a collection called the Repository of Sacred Music (which sold about 150,00 copies!). I couldn't help thinking how Robinson's words and music still made (and continue to make) an impact despite his difficulties. Maybe we are all like that, in our way.

The girls and I also looked up fountain in the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. We read all the scriptures referenced and marveled about how Jesus is a "fount" because he is Wisdom itself (also called a "fountain" in Proverbs).

Our time together was so rich. Sonia even looked up the etymology of the word "fount," and it made me smile to know that it comes from the French verb "fondre," which means "to melt."

After all, I did my own share of melting as we sat together, learning, reading, and singing.

Speaking of Love Notes

It is windy outside today. The warm air has collided with the cold and they are in a furious dance.

I went and stood in the back yard for a while. The snow, soft beneath my feet. The sun so warm. I thought about my girls, and how they smile, and how well they give of themselves to me.

Eyes closed, like I was standing on the edge of time itself, I accepted the day as a love note from God.




Valentines by Sara and Sonia.

Bringing Beauty In

A boy pounds a plate with clenched fist. The other blithely butters toast. How do I fix this?

Ann has just gathered sunflowers and declared, "I bring beauty in." But now this. Brother against brother. Mother wondering, how do I fix?

I know this hard song, this strife, though in my house it is sister against sister. The tussle of... what? Growing, reaching, wanting, not yet knowing how to navigate life. Girls discovering they are capable of scratching, hair pulling, even kicking, when Mommy isn't there to see.

How much to take upon myself?

When they were little I took it all. Sent girls to separate corners. Ordered sorry's. Wondered where I'd gone wrong.

Sometimes, for the sake of peace, I still take their struggle upon myself. But more often these days I let them have it out. It is hard to hear them discovering what they are capable of. I stand in the kitchen, hear doors slam, hear hard words. And I don't intervene. This is their journey, this discovery of the human heart and how much we want to and can hurt each other.

In the end, Ann tells her son a story of Jacob and Esau. I tell stories too. I tell stories of me and my own sister, how we loved each other one moment and the next moment pushed each other off the edge (sometimes quite literally). I ask questions, "Do you really hate her? Her? Or just hate what is happening?" I ask too,"What IS happening?" I wait until they have chosen their own separate corners, and I hold them against the darkness, remind them wordlessly what love feels like and stir, once again, a longing for sister-communion. When I remember, I pray.

Then I wait for them to fumble towards forgiveness, bring their own beauty in.

Quote from Chapter 7 of the beautiful book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.

On Eating Vanilla Yogurt and Watching the Sun Set

I am not going to say I like being sick. Or even that I don't mind being sick. I hate being sick.

I hate the bruises on my ankles, and the way I am losing weight, and the pain. I hate that I can't stand on my own two feet for more than five minutes and that I sleep until 11 o'clock each day like an infant who has just come into the world.

A really good spiritual sport would say, "When I am weak, then He is strong." And that would be true of course. She might pretend that she could be sick just about forever, and that would be cool with her. But I would prefer to say, just now, that I hate being sick, and I am glad that all of this will supposedly be gone in six weeks' time.

This late morning when my daughter brought me my new "regular," yogurt with a generous dollop of strawberry jam, I noticed a difference. She must have used vanilla yogurt instead of plain. She must have used the yogurt my friend purchased (a different brand).

I ate the yogurt very slowly. It was delicious. Vanilla, in a way my own brand is not vanilla. It occurred to me that if I hadn't been sick my friend wouldn't have gone shopping for me. I wouldn't be tasting this yogurt. Maybe ever. It reminded me of the sunsets I've been seeing from my bedroom window. Usually at sunset time I am downstairs cooking or cleaning.

None of this makes me want to say I don't mind being sick. The world was made for peace and so was I, and when that peace is broken by pain, something deep within me cries, "No!"

But I will say that grace is a sneaky and resilient thing. It can find its way into our bowls and through our windows, bringing us a measure of peace to which we can say, "Yes."

Homecoming

From birth, long months
you had lain triple broken
hearted, needle pricked,
wired, ravaged by fire

of fever and untold pain. Still.
Just yesterday you quietly came,
a blue cloud of promise o'er rise
of hill— late summer rain.


Thank you, Lord, for keeping my niece Summer Rain, through heart surgeries and suffering and danger and for bringing her home to arms of love.