In Honor of Henry Slaughter

In the 60s when I first joined Bill and Danny as part of the Bill Gaither Trio, we traveled with Doug Oldham and Henry and Hazel Slaughter, giving concerts in churches and auditoriums across the country.  The friendships cemented then were to last a lifetime.

Hazel and Henry shared our December 22nd wedding anniversary, so there was hardly a year for forty years or so when we missed exchanging bouquets of Christmas red roses.  Many years Henry and Hazel stopped by our place in Indiana for lunch or dinner on their way to Ohio to spend Christmas with their daughter Amanda and her family.  We kept in touch in other ways, too—dinner when we were in Nashville, phone calls, and notes back and forth.

Henry and Hazel were often in the group of singers that came to be known as the Homecoming Artist whenever there was a videotaping.

But on Nov. 13, we had to say good-bye to our long-term friend, Henry Slaughter.  It didn’t seem possible that this bright, social, positive man could have been 93 years old.  One of the most outstanding keyboardists in gospel music, Henry was also an arranger, songwriter, and creator of a layman’s piano course that taught many an aspiring piano student to be an accomplished church accompanist.

Before the years Henry and Hazel spent performing as a well-known husband-wife duet, Henry was the pianist for the Weatherford Quartet and the original accompanist and arranger for the innovative Imperials, a group that set a new standard of excellence in gospel music.

Henry grew up on a farm in North Carolina, and despite his five Dove Awards and great piano accomplishments, he remained humble, self-effacing, and totally fulfilled by just playing his part.

A few years back, we did a special tribute honoring Henry in the Homecoming Magazine.  He wrote Bill a note right away, overwhelmed by the salute.  He wrote to Bill, “I appreciate the honor, but I really didn’t do that much.  All I ever wanted to do was to play in the band, write a few songs, and sing in the choir.”

Well, a songwriter doesn’t let a “hook” like that fly by without catching it!  Bill called Larry Gatlin, who also admired Henry, and said, “Larry, if this isn’t the theme of a great song, I’ve missed my calling!”

In a few days, Larry and Bill met in Nashville to write Henry’s song, and they were proud to have him credited as a part of a three-part songwriting team.  The song was recorded by the Booth Brothers and performed by them on the Vocal Band’s next videotaping, Pure and Simple.  Henry was in the audience and beamed like a proud papa at the song that is perhaps the best statement of this great, humble man that might ever be written.  

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What Time is It?

Clocks of every kind fill every nook and cranny of every home.  Most homes have some kind of time piece in every room, and most of the people who live in those rooms have the current time displayed on smart watches and cellphones for any region in the world.  We are a time-driven people; we are obsessive about checking the time. Cell phones lord it over our every waking moment. Ovens, microwaves, bedside digital clocks flash the time all day and all night.  Décor clocks make statements on every wall and hallway. The tyranny of time!

But I long for timepieces that mean something.  My father, a pastor of small churches all his life, always wanted a grandfather clock.  He and Mother saved for years to finally get one for each other one year for Christmas.  Our children remember the ritual they had of winding it on Sunday each week and loved the comforting sound of it when they spent weekends at their house while we were out on the road singing.  Benjy and Melody now have that clock in the corner of their piano room.  Its music is now part of the natural habitat of their children who take for granted the sound of the chimes that mark the hours as they pass. They wind their clock on Sunday, just as their great grandparents did all those years when their parents were growing up. 

Bill and I, too, have a grandfather clock, given to us as a very special Christmas gift from those who worked with us to publish and send out our music.  It’s a real presence in our family room.  I, too, wind it on Sunday.

At our cabin in the woods where I go to write is a clock that looks like a china dinner plate.  I keep it because it was given to us years ago by Dino and Cheryl Kartsonakis; I think of them when I see it.  And the crystal clock in our living room was actually a very special award given to us by ASCAP in New York, while the one on our roll-top desk was a gift from Anderson University for just that spot next to the antique writing pens and bottles of old-fashioned ink.

The Christmas he was one year old, I gave to our grandson Liam a clock that looked like “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie”.  He loved it when I sang “Sing a Song of Six-pence” to him, so this clock from the famous Indiana artist FB Fogg found a place in his nursery.

Our daughter Amy and her husband Andrew once had a little place in the woods in quaint Brown County, Indiana.  Amy is the one in our family that was always at war with time and hated schedules that overruled the inclinations of her heart, so when I asked her what they would like for their cottage she said, “I want clocks that don’t work or have no hands.  I want a collection of them on the wall.  That will be the one place where our family can lose track of time!”

Don’t you have to just love that?  

Well, I loved it, too!  So when we were in Carmel, California, on vacation, I discovered in a lovely French country shop a dainty bracelet made of thin gold and silver faces of antique watches.  I just couldn’t resist it.  It had Amy’s name all over it!  We gave it to her for her birthday. None of the hands move on these tiny watch faces—Amy’s kind of timepiece.

When Benjy was a teen-ager, he asked me to listen to part of an album by the Canadian rock group Triumph. On it was a brilliant musical study called “Time Canon,” a trilogy of songs about time.  The first was a cut called “Time Goes By”.  There was a cut called “Killing Time”, which, if I recall, was a song about the young who think they have all the time in the world to kill.  But gradually, there is a turn in the trilogy and the meaning of “killing” turns from a lighthearted comment about killing time into an adjective meaning time that kills!  Loneliness and too much time becomes lethal, killing the soul. Unforgettable. 

 I think of that trilogy of songs now that social distancing, too much time alone, and isolation from the happy interaction of family gatherings become a strange new norm.  People were not meant to be alone.  Children need children, squealing down the hillside.  Families need to be crammed around tables, sharing turkey and pumpkin pie, telling the hilarious stories to the new generation, laughing their heads off together. We need each other!

I think again about the two kinds of time:  Chronos and Kairos. The first is earth time, the kind of time that schedules are built on, the kind of time that runs our lives and keeps up the pressure and causes the wheels of commerce to turn with relentless urgency.  Any chronological time-keeping is the product of this earth and its value system. Chronos gets us to work and to school and to church and sets the framework of our days.

Then there is God’s time.  Amazing how something like a worldwide pandemic can stop down what we all thought was totally essential, and make us reconsider what is vitally important after all. God’s time, Kairos, is eternal and not the victim of earth’s systems, values, or pressures.  I am coming to believe that it may be our mission on this earth to turn what Chronos time we have here in this life into something eternal—to make something “Kairos” out of the hours of time we are given on this earth, something that will transcend time and space and go on after time and space shall end.

And I visit the clocks of my life again.  It is more than their ability to tell me what time it is; it is to remind me the value of the moments we have.  It is Liam winding my parents grandfather clock on Sunday because it matters.  It is making conscious note that Sunday isn’t just another day to be driven by our cell phones.  It is the day to make something of the time, put some eternity in it by the way we dish up the pot roast after worship and have that lingering conversation with the teen-agers and the little ones, and the old ones, and the usually-too-busy-ones and the college students who know more right now than they will ever know again in their lives.  It is listening—and seeing in everyone’s insight a kernel of truth and that is a treasure we may not have recognized before.  And it is that “something,” that Kairos sitting right here in the middle of our Chronos—right here in this moment on this planet at this time with these people we love, barely aware that the clock is chiming away marking something, well, timeless!

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The Song and the Sword

I have a file four inches thick in my office called “THE SONG THAT BROUGHT ME HOME.”  It is full of letters people have written us over the years telling of the power of a song to break through the maze of the mind, when nothing else would, to turn lives around and bring hearts back home.  Some day I hope to turn that folder into a book.

Most of us have our own stories, stories of how deaf we were to lectures and arguments, no matter how true or logical, and how love managed to throw us a life-line floating on the wings of a song or poem, painting, or story that by-passed all steel-trap excuses and went straight to the wound in the soul.

It was the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton who put in the voice of the Cardinal, a character in his 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy these words:

True, This—
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword.  Behold
The arch-enchanters wand!—itself is nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless!—Take away the sword.

Ah!  The power of words over the machinery of war!  This quote brings to mind a sentence burned deep into a piece of barn wood on our entry gate that has been attributed to Plato and others:  “Let me write the songs of a nation; I care not who writes its laws.”

It occurs to me that the list of life-lessons (Proverbs) and the love poem (Song of Solomon) of the wise Solomon and the songs of David (the Psalms) have outlasted most constitutions and articles of government.  The Psalms continue to sing their way into the lives of our children and our children’s children, and most of us have laid our old folks to rest reciting and singing their eternal truths.

When Bill and I taught high school English, we loved to have the students learn the poem of Longfellow entitled “The Arrow and the Song,” comparing the speed and accuracy of an arrow to that of a song.  The poem ends with this stanza:

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song from beginning to end
I found again in the heart of a friend.

How effective and long-lasting is the marriage of a great message and the perfect music when they are both beautiful and true.

Some historians and anthropologists theorize that music evolved rather late.  This has to be the case if they also believe that human beings evolved from primitive life forms that could only grunt and groan to communicate their basic needs.  But philosophers and thinkers like J. R. R.  Tolkien (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings) and C. S. Lewis (Narnia, Mere Christianity, The Four Loves, Screwtape Letters) believe that not only did music come first but that it was His song, sung into the void, that created the earth and everything in it. Many physicists now are finding evidence that the originator of all matter is the vibrating sound wave and that the Big Bang had to be a sound.  Could it possibly have been with a song God sang all things into existence?  Could it be that it was the song that departed when man decided to play God, and God wrote “Ichabod” over the doorpost of mankind?  Was it the absence of the song that confused communication after the Tower of Babel? And was it to return the song to our lives that Jesus came and the angels sang?

When we see what is happening to our ability to communicate with each other on a deep and meaningful level, we might be concerned that what started with music and the Song of God (the Word) might end up with grunts and groans.

Church, we must keep singing!  We must sing the deep, pure, clear song of Jesus and sing it with great joy!  Perhaps Bob Benson best explained why in this beautiful piece:

There has to be a song—
There are too many dark nights,
Too many troublesome days,
Too many wearisome miles,
There has to be a song—
To make our burdens bearable,
To make our hopes believable,
To release the chains of past defeats,
Somewhere—down deep in a forgotten corner of each one’s heart—
There has to be a song—
Like a cool, clear drink of water
Like the gentle warmth of sunshine,  
Like the tender love of a child,
There has to be a song.

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Mother's Notes

My mother used to leave notes on things: the kitchen counter the steering wheel of the car, the bathroom mirror.  She also left notes in public places like the picnic tables at roadside parks when she had found an unusual plant she thought the next tourist might enjoy, or when by chance she and my father had missed someone they had hoped to meet.

More than once, I have found notes on restaurant doors telling me that the plan had changed for some reason and the party was going to happen some place else.  She once left a torn piece of notebook paper tacked to the doorframe at Olive Garden with a needle (thread still attached) she always kept in her purse.

   Gloria and Kids,
Bill and Daddy decided they wanted Mexican. Meet us at Chi-chi’s.
Love,
Mother

Often, when our children were little, mother would travel with us.  When we had to be gone on long trips – like the tour up the west coast that lasted two weeks – mother would take the children out of school on Friday and fly to where we were for the middle long weekend in between.  We tried to do something special with the kids during these times to help them learn about the history or the uniqueness of the geographical area we were in.  One of our yearly venues was the Anaheim Convention Center in the Los Angeles area which is very close to Disney Land.

While there, Mother and I took all three of the children to the park, but because two of them were so small, Mother walked the babies in the stroller so I could take Suzanne on some rides safe only for older children.  The afternoon wore on and the little ones got tired and fussy.  When Suzanne and I tried to find Mother and the little ones, they were no where to be seen.  We went back to the entrance gate in an effort to catch sight of them.  Suddenly, Suzanne looked toward the tall hedge separating the park from the parking lot.

“Look!” she said. “I think I see a note on that hedge.  No one would leave a note but Grandma.”  Sure enough, when we got close enough, we could see that someone had stabbed a piece of paper on to one of the sticks on the hedge:

        The babies got tired, and I’ve run out of spiz;
We’ve gone on back to the hotel to take naps.
Love,
Mother

Not long ago I was talking to Ivan Parker.  He was telling me about a sermon he’d heard an evangelist preach about the crossing place between this life and the next.  The preacher had made the point that no matter who we are in this life, no matter what we’ve accomplished or how much we’ve failed, whether we are known or unknown, death is the great leveler, and we all cross the river at the same place.
That imagery made me think about Mother and her notes.  And I got to wondering, since she’s already made the crossing, what notes she might have left for us there?  Knowing her, she certainly tacked a scrap of something to a tree by the river.

I’ve run out of energy, so I’ve gone on home, I can imagine her writing.  Come as soon as you can and bring the children with you.  Find me when you get here.
Mother

What if other sojourners who have finished this race would happen to leave us notes?  What would they say on the remnants of life they left nailed to a tree?

  Relax. The just do live by faith. Cross with confidence.
Martin Luther

Will there be one that reads?

Take time to be holy. 
The way of the cross leads home. 
John Wesley

What if Vestel Goodman left a note with one of her famous lace hankies that said:

I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey now!
Love ya, darlin’; Vestal

 Or maybe?

 To God be the glory!  I’m praising my Savior for such a blessed assurance; Jesus is mine.  And yours, too.  
Fanny Crosby
P.S.  I can see!

 Or perhaps one that says:

 Secure in His arms.
John Calvin

I keep thinking about what I’d most like to say to those coming behind me, should I make the crossing first.  What message would I tie to a reed or roll up and wedge in the crotch of a tree for my kids or my sweet husband or my friends to find as they near the place.  Maybe I’d write on a scrap from a yellow legal pad:

Something beautiful!
More beautiful than we ever imagined.
Find me just north of the “Welcome Home” banner
somewhere by the water. 
You are loved!
Gloria

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Repurposed Love Song

It was just over two years ago that I posted my first blog.  Now 116 blogs later, so many of you have joined the long parade of faithful readers who have responded with your comments and stories and have shared the blog with friends and family when something I wrote brought them to mind.

Probably most of you have no idea why I started writing in this new form for me, or why I called it LOVE SONG TO MY LIFE.  So, I will stop midstream to refresh my purpose for myself and for you who have signed on since.

When we are living our lives at breakneck speed, juggling many roles and making schedules that would have sent our parents to the psych ward (sent some of us there, too!) we don’t notice so many of the true treasures that whirl by because we are viewing them from a carrousel.  Oh, we know they are there and maybe utter an obligatory prayer of thanksgiving in church or when we tuck the kids in at night--sometimes we even write a thank you note for some friend’s kind gesture--but most of the time, we’re just lucky to make it from morning to night without dropping some ball.

Maybe I felt an urgency to gather some moments into my conscientious focus because I sensed a slowing down time coming like a child spinning in a circle does just before she gets too dizzy to stand up and realizes the sidewalk is coming up to crack her head.

For whatever reason, what has transpired in the two years and 115 blogs since I started would never have been believed. A very contagious virus has brought our country and the rest of the world to a screeching halt.  If someone had said to any one of us, “You need to just quit traveling, cancel your social and professional calendar, stop going to the office and church and school, do work and education from your bedroom computer, close down playgrounds and vacation spots, quit flying and shopping and having lunch with friends or business contacts,”  we would have all answered in international unison, “NO WAY!”

But stop down we did, some of us for eternity as we have buried, mostly without funerals, 200,000 Americans.  This has gotten our attention! The rest of us have had to totally rethink how we do life.

Bill said yesterday after our coffee, in our what’s-on-for-today time: “The bad thing is that I don’t have anything I have to do today.”  Then he paused before going on.  “And the good thing is that there is nothing I have to do today.”

We are songwriters.  I am a lyricist.  I’ve been writing the words to music for more than fifty-five years.  I started the blog because of a lyric I wrote to not-yet-existing music.  I wasn’t sure it was a song at all, but I gave the “poem” to Dony McGuire and said, “I don’t know whether this can have music.  It may be a poem, and it may just be for me.”

I only knew it was the passion of my life to not miss the miracles of every morning, to see the love letters God has been writing to me with every sunrise and every drop of rain poised on the trumpet edge of the morning glory blossom before it drops to water the black earth.  And to write back.  To somehow register that “I got the post, Father; I got it!”

Good days and hard days, my life has been a correspondence with my Maker.  Bill and I have written our life together in songs.  If you were to lay our songs end-to-end for the last almost 60 years, you would have the only biography I may ever write.  These are milestones of my journey.

And, also, like the series of pieces I wrote to settle the doubts of my soul, only to discover that they were written in response to Someone who was talking to me when I wasn’t talking to Him, and I had to admit that these were Simple Prayers, these pieces called a blog were love songs—love songs to my life.

So, I stop here midstream, as I said, to let you hear again the strange poem, now with the music Dony sent back to me, sung by the divine voice of his and Reba’s daughter Destiny.  Please read your own story into these words and music. The good thing that has come from being “sheltered in place” with my husband and our life in our old house on our hillside is that what we “have to do today” is to pay attention, to notice, and to read the love notes scattered everywhere from our Father.  And I will write back, too.  These are--and will continue to be--the lived-out love songs to my life.

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Nature's Grace

The yard is a hundred shades of green with punctuation marks of red geraniums, climbing pink hydrangeas, and golden black-eyed-susans. Along the porch edge the yellow marigolds, orange impatiens, and red-orange geraniums smile up between the white petunias and blue lobelias. The clematis vines have climbed to the upstairs porch where they are blooming away in orchid-pink stars.

The layers of green on the hillside are starting to look like I had hoped they would. The hundred-foot white pine that was shaved on one side by an ice storm two decades ago has become a dark backdrop for the dogwoods and redbuds we planted to hide the missing branches. Smokey-gray lichen dot the bark of the pine giving character to the once-ravaged trunk. The beautiful weeping redbud my sister and her husband gave us years ago now looks like a fine lady’s green umbrella of perfect leaves layered like a swan’s down fan. Last spring before leaves, the umbrella was solid pink blossoms.

Beyond the layered pine and dogwood and redbuds is the dark, dark green rounded beauty of the “oak bush”. Yes, I know there is typically no such thing, but a few summers ago our stately oak was diseased and died. We had the tree cutters saw it down, and, like always, I asked them to leave me a tall stump that I could use as a pillar to hold a big planter of geraniums and trailing sweet potato vines.

Much to our surprise, the “dead” oak stump began send out green shoots! We had seen willows do this, but never a hardwood like an oak. We have watched now for several years as our oak stump turned into what we now call our oak “bush”. It is now a 20 feet tall and perfectly shaped tree. We tell our porch guests to look closely, for if they do, they will see the thick stump of our old oak tree, now almost totally camouflaged by thick new branches reaching like children around the stump to grasp hands as they dance in the breeze. I sit here this morning marveling at what God can do with the seeming tragedies of nature.

We, too, have whole parts of us that have been sheared off by the ice storms or cut down entirely, leaving us despairing because we thought that part of our once tender hearts was dead. Sometimes we, too, have tried to hide the gash or the stump with some fast-growing blooms or repurpose what was left and make do. But, lo! Something new was sprouting from a deep root! And look there, how we were surrounded and healed by the flowering beauty of others who came along side to cover our wounds and bloom away while we healed and found a new role. Hope! Insistent hope!

Farther down the hillside from the redeemed pine and the oak bush is another old stump, this one of a huge willow that was toppled by a windstorm. Willows are more brittle, and while they can bend to most spring winds, they are more easily broken by twisters. Again, we had to cut this tree below the break. It stood for many years, sort of rotting away on the inside leaving a jagged circumference. Ants and other insects gradually reduced the core to sawdust. One day, headed to the creek for a cook-out, we noticed a sprout in the middle of the decaying stump. By the end of the summer, we could tell the sprout was a mulberry. This year, nourished and shelter by the old willow wood, the sprout is well on its way to being a strong mulberry tree that will furnish a good crop of food for the dozens of bird species that make our land their home. These are the same cardinals, finches, warblers, wrens, martins and cedar wax wings that sing to us from the old white pine and the oak bush while the sun is setting to the west of our front porch.

Eventually, for all trees and people, there will be an end of our time on this good earth. But the end is not the end. There is an “after that.” The seeds of the willow catkins in the spring and the pinecones and acorns in autumn will take root somewhere for a crop of new sprouts. And even the core of an old tree will prove to be fertile soil for something fresh and green.

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Home is Portable

If there’s anything I’ve learned over our years of making home, it is that home is portable.  Home is anywhere our family is together.  For us “home” has been not only in our house on the hill, but in hotel rooms, on busses, in sports team arena locker rooms, auditorium dressing rooms, and sometimes in church Sunday School rooms or Pastors’ offices.  I have made “home” in cottages at lakesides, cabins in the woods, and rental condos by the ocean.

My friend Peggy Benson taught me that seasoned travelers do not “travel light” if you’re a homemaker.  When our kids were small, it was Peg who told me, “You can check two suitcases as easily as one.” Of course, that was when there were not the current limits on luggage. When our families vacationed together, I would find our kids drawn to Peggy’s room.  When I went to find out why, I would discover that Peggy had made noodle soup in her hot pot, wrapped the children in a homemade throw or quilt, and had, in general, created a comfort zone in the Benson hotel room.  Little did I know then how valuable her example would be!

Given any space that is ours for a time, I have learned to light a travel candle, put a favorite throw over the end of the bed (cashmere throws from Williams Sonoma take almost no room to pack yet are super soft and warm), add some flowers (roadside thistles and Queen Anne’s Lace will do) and make a hot cup of Earl Grey tea (my favorite teas are from Tea Forté). 

One of my favorite travel tuck-a-ways are clear-vinyl vases (Wonder Vase), that store flat and fold out to hold a bouquet of prairie grasses or blue roadside chicory, wild daisies or orange daylilies.

Small embroidered linen guest towels spread over a hotel table give a simple but lovely setting for a couple of small antique books of English poetry and a picture of important loved ones framed in silk travel-frames.

I try to tuck in a game or two as a motivation for conversation.  Travel Scrabble and Backgammon make a great alternative to T.V. after a day on the road…or on the beach.

I am usually responsible for decorating our home-away-from-home--our tour bus.  I choose a pallet that is both light (to give the illusion of more space) and warm.  Our present bus takes its color cues from nature: warm browns, russet, and creams with accents of robin’s egg blue.  Pillows, soft throws, and subtle lighting seem to invite those who travel to put up their feet, lie back and enjoy a good cup of coffee.  A coffee pot, a refrigerator stocked with good-for-you snacks, a cupboard full of organic cereals, and a bowl of fresh fruit on the table make this as near to home as it gets on the road.

If I have my way, there are always plenty of great books to read and a good collection of classical and other instrumental music to comb the tangles from our stressed-out psyches and provide food for the soul.

We have also taken our grandkids on bus week-ends, and what a time we had!  We played games, made art projects, ate snacks and did homework.  We had long conversations about everything from girlfriends and playground competitions to aspirations for the future.  In short, we spent the week-end “at home”. 

We have learned that home is wherever we can be together. Home is “building a nest” where we happen to be, in a hotel, on the bus, in a rented vacation space, or in a tent in the woods.  Home is making memories together—on purpose.  Home is as portable, well, as love.

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Aluminum Tumblers

Last week I sent for a set of aluminum tumblers.  I admit the motivation was mainly nostalgic; my grandmother had a set of these colorful glasses, and so did my mother.  But another reason I wanted to find a set was deeper than that.

I was born in the March after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941.  I don’t remember World War II, but my uncle served in that war and was wounded in New Guinea. About every family we knew had some family wound from the war.

But I do remember having to have government stamps to buy gasoline.  I remember what we called “butter” was really Oleo, a white shortening like Crisco to which we added a tablet of yellow coloring (like the tablets for coloring Easter eggs) that we mixed into the shortening to look like butter.

I remember that my beautiful mother wasn’t able to buy sheer hosiery, and that we had to peel the foil attached to our gum wrappers to use to cover the cardboard cut-out shapes of bells, stars, and pine trees for trimming our Christmas tree.  We saved the Gold Stamps and S & H Green Stamps we got when mother or daddy bought groceries or gas until we had enough to fill stamp-books we traded for a new toaster or a tricycle.  Metal was used for the “war effort”, because evidently we were pounding plow shears into swords (or guns or tanks or airplanes).

We did all this saving and scrimping because a mad terrorist dictator and several other madmen were eating their way across Europe and the United Kingdom intent on taking over the world and destroying every democracy where people had a voice enough to insist on personal liberties.

When the war was finally over and the allied countries got a chance to begin the long process of rebuilding, we were finally able to get things like fine fabrics and metals.  One of the easiest metals to access was aluminum because it is the most widespread metal on earth (more than 8% of the earth’s core mass) and the third most common chemical element  (after oxygen and silicon).  Coating alloys of this common metal made it safe to use, and families were drawn to glasses and bowls made of this metal, maybe because metals had been so scarce.

Coated cookware of aluminum became available, too, and my mother had for years an incredible “waterless” cookware set called Miracle Maid. I had a set of my own when Bill and I got married and still have it at our log cabin in the woods.

But as a little kid I was drawn to the tumblers because of their bright colors and shiny metallic surfaces.  I loved that they would keep iced drinks (cherry Kool-Aid) cold, and cool my hot summer hands, too. After the drab years of the war when the world was building back and trying to flourish again, I felt like a princess holding these ice-filled sparkling tumblers of hot pink, blue, purple and yellow!

A few years ago, I found colorful ice cream dishes made of this metal, but it was just this week that I got delivered to our door this set of the tumblers of my childhood.  I love them!  And because of the shortages of the war years, I will never take for granted the resources we have now at every turn:  copper pots and pans, multi-layered cookware, yards of aluminum foil for grilling and wrapping, bins full of nails and bolts in every size, pewter candle sticks and decorative pieces....

We have buildings and bridges built of steel girders that hold tons of vehicles of transportation and metals so fine they can be pressed into the thinness of a fingernail are easy to take for granted.  I study the discoveries and inventions of new metals and alloys that can handle the smallest and finest of jobs.  I don’t know why they all work, but I will never forget the days when we had to save the foil from our gum wrappers.  I will tell my story to my grandkids who will smile politely and drink lemonade from these jewel-toned tumblers and never understand why they are so precious to me.

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Late Bloomers

We had a storm they called a derecho, a straight wind storm without an eye.  We are used to tornadoes in the Midwest, but this was more like a hurricane, only over land.  The next morning revealed that we had lost four trees or big chunks of them, and many limbs were strewn over our yard and the rest of the county.  Felled was a willow that had been weakened by a beaver, a maple that had formerly lost a big limb, and a white pine, totally uprooted.  The pine was in an area that sometimes floods, so it had no need to put down deep roots to reach its necessary water source. It seems that nature prunes and thins out, not only weaker branches, but whole trees to make room for stronger specimens that need to reach the sun.

Strangely, though, a whole patch of naked lilies are still standing on their leafless stems, stems filled with water like a thick straw.  These lilies are a mystery to me.  In spring they send out long, rich green leaves like other lilies.  But in a few weeks, the leaves wilt and die and become humus around the area where the bulbs have been planted.   Then, in hot August when everything else is wilting, up come naked stems, like giant moisture-filled drinking straws. 

These stems shoot two feet into the air, then produce a mass of buds that unfold into the most gorgeous and delicate pale pink lilies. Talk about late bloomers!  Behind our garden swing, rising above a carpet of hostas, there are these glorious lilies.  They are like spring in August!

The other lilies have long since finished blooming.  Even the enduring day lilies are by now waning into mostly seed pods.  Ah, but the naked lilies!  They are proudly standing tall and leafless on their watery stems, breathing joy into the hot summer.  And, amazingly, after last night’s  storm that took down a willow, a pine, and a maple, the naked lilies still stand!

Maybe I am to learn not to despair over late bloomers. They just might surprise me.  Just when it seems  they are never going to bloom, they rescue the dulling landscape with beauty to take your breath away!

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Covid-19 Rant

Strange. Now that the journey markers of each week are gone, it’s hard to remember what day it is without Monday—Bible Study, Tuesday—get groceries and write, Wednesday—answer mail, emails, text and do the wash, Thursday—shop, do self-care like hair appointments, nail repair, get lunch alone and read, go to drug store for personal needs, Friday—special dinner out or at home with friends or Pacer games with Bill, Saturday—water flowers, yard work, pick veggies, grocery fill-in, Sunday—church and lunch with close friends or a new college student or come home for soup and a nap and reading.

No wonder people in nursing homes are thought to be losing their memories when every day is exactly the same and no one comes to visit or eat or have great discussions or listen to music together or meet in the park or go for walks or grocery shop....  Who cares if it’s Friday or Tuesday? 

Why put on make-up or do your hair or take another shower or read a decorating or fashion magazine. Or news magazine, for that matter?  No wonder the residents all look old and puckered and drag around in old chenille bathrobes. No wonder last year’s magazines are as good as this year’s.  No wonder they don’t get tired of that lavender top and want a new striped yellow and lime one—or new shoes, or sharp new slacks.  No wonder they are late to the dining room when it doesn’t matter what time it is or what’s for dinner. Everything tastes the same and IS the same anyway.  Why play a game when winning or sharpening your wits won’t lead to a wittier banter?

I have to mark my days during this pandemic by doing something that makes me know today isn’t yesterday and certainly won’t be tomorrow!  I have to cook different foods.  I have to set the table and do it with different place mats and different colored napkins and intentionally different flowers. I have to light the candles and play the music.

I have to actually touch my sweet lover and kiss his lips and watch romantic movies—or disturbing ones or Westerns, or documentaries about Henry VIII.  I have to make a blueberry cobbler, even if and especially if I send half of it to Rodney Wilson across the street.  I have to take a hot bath in sweet-scented bath salts.  I have to like myself.

Today I will pickle some cucumbers and pull some weeds.  It matters.  I will snip off some zinnias and a stem or two of lavender and put them in a vase with purple phlox and the last of the lilies.

Today I will put on my lipstick and polish my flaking-off nails because even though I can’t go to the nail salon, I will not abide these ugly nails.  I will make tea and it will be Earl Gray!

Today I will hug someone who doesn’t have a temperature.  Today I will read my new travel planners I just ordered from Amazon even though I pretty much know I can’t go anywhere any time soon.

Today I will co-ordinate my clothes and wear earrings.  I will read something so deep and challenging that it will tie my brain in a knot and force me to read it again—and again, and maybe again.  I will not give up until I get it!  Today, listen to me! Today will not be just another day no different from yesterday or tomorrow.  Today I will shine, even if no one is watching.  And I will sing!

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Come for Supper

Think of your best memories: vacations, holidays, family gatherings, life-altering conversations, relations, joyful happenings.  More likely than not, they involved food.  Perhaps it was a picnic by the lake, or maybe one of the gatherings around the table at grandma’s house.  Was it that delicious habit of sharing a cold watermelon on the front porch on a hot afternoon, or the barbeques at a favorite uncle’s back yard after a family game of football or volleyball? 

Could it be that more barriers are broken down around the kitchen table than around the conference table?  Could more church disagreements be mended if we still had more “all day singings with dinner on the grounds” and fewer finance committee meetings?

I’m with Leonard Sweet; let’s bring back the table. (From Tablet to Table—NavPress)  I vote for returning the kitchen table to its rightful place as the center of our homes, and celebrating the place homecooked food plays--or could play--in a society more and more drawn to the ”virtual reality” of electronic games and less and less to the face-to-face reality of a lively discussion around the family or community table.

If we think back, most of our best memories are connected to some special recipe that no one could make like grandma or those barbequed meatballs “we always had at cook-outs by the creek.” How many relationships could be restored or initiated if we took the time to extend an invitation to “join us for supper” or “stop by for coffee.” Eating out for dinner (or running by the drive-up) may be good for a change or convenient on band or sports practice nights, but is not the same as “supper.”  The words “dinner” and “supper” are not quite synonymous. Supper means everyone is home and around the table, passing around the green beans and mashed potatoes and all talking at once. Supper is love and acceptance and something to say.

Can any child or teen-ager resist sharing his or her day at school when the first thing to greet them when they bound through the door of the kitchen are hot chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of cold milk? For me it was the conversations around our dining room table that made the world of opportunity open up to me and began my pursuit of God’s best for my life. For many of us it was “table talk” that drew us in or healed our hearts when we were the stranger or floundering for some reason.

It’s no accident that even when we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” the great Shepherd has promised to prepare a table before us--even in the presence of our enemies--and to spread for us, his bride, a great marriage supper when we finally get home.  And, as my friend Bob Benson used to say, there will be only round tables in heaven; at round tables we can look into each other’s eyes, and we can always squeeze in a couple more chairs!

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Distilling Home

It seems that many are using this time of pause to make some life changes.  One of those seems to be what has been called “downsizing.”  I don’t particularly like that term.  The transition from the spacious family home, filled with children and activity, to a smaller more manageable space is not an easy one. 

Rather than viewing this change as “loss,” perhaps it is better to address it as a “distillation” of a full life.  This seems to me a better mind set, because it is more like the old milk separator my grandparents used to use when the milk was brought in from hand milking the cows. I remember there was a wide funnel with a fine filter in it through which grandpa poured the milk. This funnel sat at the top of the milk container.  The milk was then allowed to sit in the refrigerated milk container until the cream rose to the top, leaving the milk with little butterfat at the bottom.  No wonder they called this “skimmed milk.”  The top milk could then skimmed off and churned into butter.

I like to think of the time of paring down as “distilling” the pure essence of a life well lived, a time for letting the cream rise to the top, and letting the “old blue milk,” as grandma used to call it, go. 

So maybe these suggestions might help in the this distillation process:

• Choose a space (apartment, condo, smaller house) that is open and light. Chopped-up spaces feel cramped, enclosed, and often dark. Paint walls light colors to further add to a feeling of optimism and make the space you have feel bigger, and try to save mirrors and wall pieces that have reflective surfaces:  shiny brass lamps, glistening picture frames, a reflective serving tray.

•  While sorting through furniture, pictures, art, and accessories, choose to keep only the pieces that are of a compatible scale and style to compliment the new space.  Choose favorite pieces or art and accessories that have meaning and also fit the actual wall and display areas available in the new place.

•  Consider sorting and putting all possibilities in separate places (all lamps together, all paintings together, small end tables together, etc.). Choose from this stock objectively the ones that will create uncluttered beauty in the new space and avoid arranging ruts. For example, try a “bedroom” lamp with a “family room” table with a small “hallway” painting arranged in a grouping with a piece of “dining room” pottery or an antique book on the table. Make a collage of smaller pictures or similar pieces like birds, crosses, horse pictures, etc.

• Pare down kitchen utensils, cookware, china sets, linens, etc., keeping only what will be needed for daily routine and smaller scale entertaining.  This is a good time to give things you treasure to the family and friends you most what to have them.

•  There are great causes you can help by giving away what you don’t need:

  • women’s shelters and pregnancy centers, Goodwill, and Salvation Army are great places to take extra towels, kitchen equipment, linens, bed sets, clothing and furniture.

  • consignment stores will often sell for you rugs, draperies, large tables, crystal sets, bedroom sets.  Give the proceeds to education.

  • church libraries, book sales, and street fairs are places that will help pare down your collection of books.  Share children’s books with new parents or daycare centers.

The goal is to make a fresh space for a new chapter of life that honors the past but celebrates the future with hope and expectancy, making the new home ready for hospitality and full of joy.  Keep only what you love and what works in this new venture.  While you can make the decision yourself, pass on things to the people in your life to whom they would be helpful or meaningful.  Don’t be offended if the things you once treasured are not treasured by your children; they need to make their own memories with their kids.  Remember, it’s relationships, not stuff, that matters.  Only people, not things, are eternal. This is the time to let the cream rise to the top!

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Let It Go! Hold It Close!

My friend Ann Smith, a wise and insightful mentor, once gave me this observation from her years of working with people:

MOST PEOPLE GET INTO TROUBLE BECAUSE THEY HANG ON TO WHAT THEY SHOULD LET GO OF AND LET GO OF WHAT THEY SHOULD HANG ON TO.

Now, as I look back on our experience with artists, students, friends, and audiences from all walks of life, I have found this statement to be true.  And in my own life I would have to admit that my failures and successes, my growth spurts and set-backs can be traced to my own choices of what to hang on to and what to let go of.

Great wisdom of the ages should not be disregarded lightly.  The book of Proverbs is full of warnings and encouragements focused on what to hang on to and what to let go of.  And Jesus was wisdom, walking—so much so that many biblical scholars suggest that we could substitute the name of Jesus for the word “wisdom” as we read through the Proverbs. In the gospels we see Him living out the “cling to” and “relinquish” tension with every breath.

The great saints, the prophets, and many deep seekers who have gone to the desert or the seashore to step back from the politic of life and current skewed public opinion to gain perspective, have given us stories and poetry, songs and principles for living in the hopes we, who have come after them, could steer a clearer course and avoid some of the “shipwrecks” they had in trying to find their way.

I love the children’s movie FROZEN.  Nearly every three-year-old in American (and, I would venture, their parents and grandparents, too!) can sing every word of the theme song, “Let It Go!”  If anyone had brought us the lyrics to this song, suggesting it would be perfect for a kids’ movie, we would have undoubtedly rejected it for being too complicated and profound for a child.  But never underestimate the mind of a child.  The kids “get” this song!

“Let it go! Let it go!” the children sing, spinning around with their hands in the air just like the ice princess.  And, indeed, even children are experiencing in our culture the discovery that there are hurtful things, things out of their control, that they must “let go” of if they want to survive and move on unencumbered.

I guess I am hoping for a sequel hit that says, “Hold it close!  Hold it close! Never let this treasure go!”  Because as important as it is to let go of grudges, pain, betrayals, hurtful memories, damaging habits, and untrue beliefs, there are some things we must hold on to.

For a short list, the words of Paul is a good place to start:

Finally, whatever is true,
Whatever is noble,
Whatever is right,
Whatever is pure,
Whatever is lovely,
Whatever is admirable--
If anything is excellent or praise worthy—think about such things.   (Phil.4:8-9)

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America on Purpose

These are the times that call us to live our lives on purpose as individuals; and if we believe in the right to make our own choices as individuals, the times also demand that we live on purpose as citizens of our local and national communities.  In this year’s election process it is imperative that we as citizens seriously explore our nation’s purpose and our personal role in it.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

This is our nation’s 244th birthday.  How young we are! And the jury is still out, as Abraham Lincoln said, as to whether “this nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure”.  The Republic that has sustained our country is still testing and probably will always be testing whether such a democracy can endure, because, as many of our forefathers wrote, this kind of experiment depends on the moral character of its people.  There can never be enough laws enacted or enforcers trained to make a country good.

As we celebrate what we tend to take for granted—our more firmly established nation and its government of the people, by the people, and for the people--we must be aware that freedom is always a fragile thing, balanced on the generous and voluntary agreement of all the free to abandon personal inclinations to selfishness and care for the well-being of others.  In so doing we must trust the audacious expectation that others will be caretakers of our basic rights in return.  Making the putting of others and the common good ahead of self-interests is a biblical principle.  The question is, have we come to value freedom enough that we dare on regular days to risk that freedom to live in this reciprocity, alert to any internal (inside our own hearts) or exterior efforts to threaten it.

The future of freedom as we know and love it depends on our personal and persistent living out in practical ways our commitment to this ideal.  It calls us to tell our children the story of how freedom was won as well as discussing our best and worst efforts at living it out in the past, and challenging them to love better and take seriously their responsibility to chisel out their generation’s call to this precious and unique vision. 

Photo by Angela Kellogg

My favorite verse of “America the Beautiful” is this:

Oh, beautiful for patriot dreams
That see beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears.

There must always be visionaries who, when in even moments of our most disappointing behavior, can see and hold us to a better purpose.  When our cities are smoking with disillusioning failure, someone has to still see the potential of precious stone sparkling in the sun.  When the wails of despair are rising to the ears of heaven, and tears of the disheartened are flowing, someone has to still believe that there is model to which we can aspire of a city “undimmed by human tears.”

That dream city will not come about by human perfection.  It will only be an outgrowth of grace, the awareness that in our worst moments, “God shed his grace on me.” That amazing mercy gives us the right to hope, and demands that we be gracious and merciful to each other in spite of glaring imperfections.

In the next few days many of us will celebrate our free country by roasting hot dogs and wearing our patriotic tee shirts; the community band will play “The Star Spangled Banner”.  We will listen to our children’s children sing along, but they will not know unless we tell them that this national anthem is about a wounded and embattled remnant of soldiers, straining to see through the fog and gun smoke whether the tattered remains of the American flag could still be seen flying from the mast of a riddled ship in the harbor.  It did!  And still flies nearly two and a half centuries later over battlefields and harbors and battered cities where men and women have given their lives and blood so that the rest of us could go on taking care of each other’s right to be.

But there is a deeper, more important foundation for this freedom we protect and enjoy.  It is the deep belief that God created every living person with an eternal soul and therefore with infinite and eternal value.  It is that eternal value that gives each person essential rights. Our founders believed that these rights were not ours to give, but were “endowed by the Creator” as a gift from God.  The right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is only ours to protect and honor.

In spite of our shortcomings and failures, we can celebrate progress made. Our nation has learned and grown in the trust in its people to do the right thing; when that trust is strained almost to the breaking point, those who follow the Master of love must not abandon that trust but renew our commitment to it.

The belief in basic human value has driven us to fight for justice, not only here, but in places where human rights have been grossly violated.  This belief has caused us to use our power to defend the weak and the downtrodden and to preserve the rights of those with whom we disagree.  We yet have a long way to go, but we have made progress, and must always work to do so.

In the end, if we lose our belief in God and the eternity of the soul, if we degrade and disregard the sanctity of life itself, not just commercially viable life, but all life, and cease to protect the powerless, we ourselves and our nation will be swallowed up in greed and overtaken from within, disintegrating into an anarchy where only the ones with the biggest weapons survive.  We will go the way of ruthless dictatorships of the world, each eventually betrayed and mutinied by an uprising of the disenfranchised.

So in kindness, decency, patience and gentle grace, let freedom ring.  May we believe in the value of all and use our powers only and always to protect the weak, the powerless, and those who have yet to enjoy the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  May we never abandon our own personal responsibility to live out our commitment to these ideals by scraping onto the plate of institutions and government the total load of pursuing “liberty and justice for all”.  And may God bless not only America, but all peoples who choose right over evil.

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Wonderful Words

I love words and symbols. Actually, words are symbols, symbols of objects, realities, and abstract ideas.  I cannot resist wallpaper with words, fabric with words and symbols, or words molded or carved into sculptures or wood.  All the more, then, I love words that have specific meaning to the family that lives in rooms decorated with them.

Over the doorway of our country kitchen there is a carved wooden piece that says “Psalm 100”, because this is the Psalm our kids learned when they were a part of the cast of the children’s musical Kids Under Construction.  Other word art pieces hang on the walls of our bedroom and workout room.

The two gateways to our driveway hold wooden signs suspended from chains.  One says SHALOM and the other says Willowmere, the name our daughter Amy chose to name our home place when she was in junior high school and reading the Anne of Green Gables books.

When we decided to create a place in our home town for people to visit and experience community, it seemed perfect to cover the walls in the restaurant with scripture about community and unity.  Because I had taught French in those years when Bill and I started our life together, we thought it would be fun to put those scriptures in French.  Later when we added a smaller room for meetings and small gatherings, an artist friend came to paint scriptures about loving each other in several languages so that everyone from around the world would be greeted in their own native tongue.

Deuteronomy 6:7-8 instructs us to teach the ways of the Lord God to our children and talk about them “when you sit at home and walk on the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Write them down and tie them on your hands as a sign.  Tie them on your forehead to remind you and write them on your doors and gates.”

In the book of fun things for families to do together that Shirley Dobson and I wrote several years ago called Let’s Hide the Word, we thought it would be fun to suggest some theme décor room ideas for children’s bedrooms, playrooms, or family gathering places.  Here are a few:

• The Garden of Eden enclosed patio

• Daniel and the Lion’s Den room for boys

• Paul’s Sailing Adventures room

• Fruits of the Spirit breakfast nook

• A Dorcas room (painted in shades of purple or using purple-toned fabrics)

• The Tent-dweller’s room

• A Desert hideaway

• The Red Sea room

• David’s hillside room (with a constellation ceiling and a shepherd theme)

I loved a room I saw that had an artist’s painting of words of a favorite poem by e. e. comings painted around the room at the top of the wall.  Another family painted a scripture in their entry hallway. 

The power of words and story keep the timeless principles of life “before our eyes” and echoing in our ears as we navigate the uncharted waters of our future.  As the old Philip Bliss gospel song says:

Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of Life;
Let me more of their beauty see--wonderful words of Life.
Words of life and beauty teach me faith and duty,
Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of Life.

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Conflict Resolution

For graduates researching possible interesting and in-demand courses of study, a degree in Conflict Resolution might be one to consider.  Lord knows we have plenty of conflict in our world to resolve!  Majors in this field are listed by several titles:  Mediation, Negotiation, Community Conflict, and Arbitration, to name a few.

Neither Bill nor I majored in this field of psychology, but I know for sure that if you were to ask Bill who was his best teacher in this area of learning, he’d say George Gaither.  Bill’s dad was a quiet and patient man.  His style of teaching was way more by example than instruction.  But as peaceful and steady as he was, there was a memorable issue he once had with a neighbor.

George had cows on his property and a huge garden.  He kept his fences in good repair to keep his cattle in the pastures and out of his garden.  There was a neighbor who didn’t have transportation at the time, so he took a shortcut into town. He walked diagonally from his house, across the railroad tracks, then, climbing the fences, crossed George’s fields and on to the main road into town.

A time or two Bill heard his dad say, “I’m afraid that if he keeps climbing the fences, it will break them down.”  So Bill asked him, “Well, why don’t you just tell him to stop?”

His dad would say something like, “Yeah, I need to talk to him about it.”

Time went by, and one day Bill noticed that there were wooden stiles (small ladders) in three places on the farm fences.  He mentioned this to his dad and asked him if he ever talked to the neighbor about climbing the fence.

“Nah,” answered his dad,  “I thought this might be a better solution.”

Ah, blessed are the peacemakers.  With a few boards and some nails, a situation was defused before it ever developed and a relationship was salvaged in the process.”  Win. Win.

Robert Frost in his poem “Mending Wall” says his neighbor kept quoting his father’s axiom, “Good fences make good neighbors.”  The poet says he is wont to ask what he is “walling in or walling out.”

George said it this way:  “He wasn’t hurting anything walking across the pasture into town.”  So instead of forbidding the trespass, he made it easier.  These sixty years later, the stiles are still speaking a silently powerful lesson to our kids and grandkids.

If the certified negotiators of the world could have just one course in George Gaither 101, the world might just call them “children of God.”  And, anyway, what are a couple of stiles, more or less?

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My Life in Book Bags

Because of Covid-19, students this year are missing graduation as we know it—no processional, no ceremony, no challenging commencement address, no bestowing of diplomas to the cheers of family and friends, no changing of the tassels and tossing of mortar boards into the air, and no emotional hugs and good-byes on the grassy hillsides and parking lots of high schools and colleges across the country. Online salutes and zoom gatherings are just not the same as the traditional pomp and circumstance of other graduation classes.

Thousands of backpacks and book/laptop bags lean against the entry hallway walls in the homes of aspiring students across America.  Will colleges actually open?  Will master’s programs begin on location?  Will internships materialize? 

But this isn’t the end of learning, even if the setting and method of the next chapter of education is uncertain. Take it from me, formal graduation won’t mean that you need to hang up your backpack or that this will be the last bookbag to punctuate your journey.

For years I have carried my life around in bookbags. I suppose that started in high school and college when bookbags were almost a part of my anatomy.  Then my life was split between traveling on week-ends and managing my at-home life.  My reading and writing had to be portable, so I just got new bookbags—one for reading, and one for yellow legal pads for writing prose and song lyrics along with rhyming dictionaries and thesauruses.

 When we had babies, I added a “diaper bag.”  That, of course, is a misnomer.  That bag had much more than diapers in it:  emergency baby food, formula, toys to keep a baby occupied in the car seat, an extra change of clothes, board books....

I can’t remember not carrying my life in bookbags. And I will confess that my purse alone carries enough to survive in a foreign country should I have an extended layover.  Only when purses started being the object of security screening did I reluctantly eliminate by small jackknife, nail clippers (Do they really think I am going to snip through the skin of the airplane with nail clippers?), sewing kit (with dangerous weapons like my grandmother’s thimble, spare needles, and a threader), and my tiny hammer/screwdriver that I could have used to build a survival hut in the woods, if I had to.

Because we traveled with children all those years, I was never without our craft bag.  Every parent knows you can’t be on the bus for a week-end or in a vacation cottage or hotel room for a week without this survival kit.  My craft bag was stuffed with water paints, chalk, construction paper, clay, scissors, tape, a stapler, markers, glue, color books, travel games, marbles, jacks, and books to read.  I could set up shop in arena dressing rooms, airport gates, or any space with a table. Poolside, we could invite newly made friends to join the fun. Once I was detained at an airport in England because I had brought six boxes of sparklers to celebrate our American Fourth of July, not dreaming they would be classified as firearms.

I have always had bookbags lined up in our coat closet, each containing an unfinished writing project on which I was currently working.  Magazine articles in process, unfinished song lyrics, chapters of a book, boxes of note cards I needed to write to thank or keep in touch with friends—there was a book bag for whichever project needed the most immediate attention.  No matter what was on the calendar, I was ready. I could just add the books I was currently reading and those to “prime the pump” for writing. (Does that sound like a Biden metaphor?)

One day I realized that my book bags were spending weeks in the closet waiting to be chosen.  Like a snowball rolling down a winter hillside, my life had gathered other lives.  I had said too many yeses and not enough nos.  Did I think I could contribute my time to every cause, take on too many responsibilities, solve the problems of too many worthy projects?  My writing had opened doors to too many other opportunities, all good things, helpful things, but they were crowding out my central purpose. My book bags were reminding me to refocus on the central priorities, and to remember that family, friends and writing were my main calling. I wanted to be a woman with a portable mission again.

Like the Israelites, waiting to be freed from bondage, I wanted to be ready to listen when God said go.  I wanted to be able to grab my craft bag for a new generation of children.  I wanted to choose my note card bag so as not to lose old friends or miss saying “thank you” for kindnesses shown to me. I wanted most of all to pick up my writing essentials and go.  I wanted to connect the dots of the life I’ve been given, now that I have gained the perspective of hindsight.  I wanted to be open to new things like this blog, celebrating and sharing this “love song to my life.”

So these days I am listening even more to my book bags, excited to pick up the one for today.  When the promised land is calling, I want to be ready to cross any sea to get to it.  May no manna fall or any rock gush cool, clear water and find me distracted by some golden calf and miss it!

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It's Okay to Laugh

It had been a happy day, climaxed by a fun evening, especially for a little three-year-old girl who had managed to cajole her daddy into chasing her around the house playing hide-and-seek and then to crawl under the big dining room table with a blanket to “play tent.”  Now it was bedtime, a bounce-up-and-down, giggly bedtime.  I finally managed to stuff two wiggly legs and two flying arms into a pair of pajamas and to complete the routine, including reading from her favorite bedtime book, Jokes for Children.  When it was time to pray, the giggling was only muffled.  When her prayer finished, I began an adult type lecture on reverence.  Her tiny voice, serious now, finally interrupted, “Why, Mother? Doesn’t God allow laughing?”

Good question, especially in this time of sobering news and legitimate fears of a viral enemy we can’t see.  Worry about the future gnaws away at our joy like a rat that’s taken up residence in the pantry.

I’m not sure where the notion came from that if it is fun, it can’t be Christian.  It certainly didn’t come from Jesus, who, though He was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” also taught that joy was the earmark of the forgiven, and ultimately drank the cup so that our “joy might be full.”

Jesus hung out with his friends, avoided arguments, and used story to impart eternal truths.  He was criticized for having too much fun and for refusing to keep his distance from people of questionable reputation.  People loved so much to hear him speak that they walked miles in sandaled feet, climbed mountains, and caused crowding problems in the marketplace just to be where he was. He had a great sense of humor--painting word pictures of cramming camels through the eye of needles and digging two-by-fours out of the eyes of those who quibbled over specks of dust.

He started his public ministry at a wedding party, loved topping a great fish story, talked to babies when his disciples jockeyed for position, and threw the biggest lakeside picnic in history.

Yet now, more than 2000 years later, there are still folks who wonder if it’s all right with God if we turn off the paralyzing news long enough (or entirely) to sing or laugh or tell jokes that don’t always end in an altar call.  Judging by the number of people we’ve met over the years who have turned their back on church because of harsh and heavy-handed religion, maybe it’s time we lightened up and actually enjoyed and shared some of the joy our Lord paid so dearly to buy us. Didn’t He say that His “yoke was easy”?

I remember two great stories from the earlier days of gospel music. Once there was a couple of singers who were critical of the fun one of the newer quartets was having in the concerts and announced that if they got into the group they would quit all of that entertaining and just minister. Jake Hess was sitting in the audience listening to this newly organized group. After about 30 minutes, he turned to a friend and said, “Well, they must be ministering; they sure aren’t entertaining.”

When the Statesman were at their prime and appearing on nationally sponsored television shows, reporters would often ask Hovie Lister if he considered what they were doing ministry or entertainment. He would answer, “Yes. Yes. Next question.”

The truth is we live in an intense world plagued by monumental problems that bombard us all day long. Most of us face financial crises, physical challenges, family issues, national fears, and spiritual setbacks. As Wordsworth said, “The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers…”

The pandemic must not totally eclipse our gratitude and hope. We need a break. We need to stop down, take a deep breath and two steps back from it all to get some perspective. We need to laugh. We need to run and play. We need a tension-free conversation over a slowly consumed meal. We need a joyful on-line concert, a thought-provoking movie, or good joke around the table.

Then, maybe we can start tomorrow with our minds cleared, our spirits lifted, and our energy restored. For me it helps to read a great book or walk by the creek or dig in the garden.  Bill and I like an evening by ourselves or by the firepit or in the woods or watching a great DVD.

One night we had what seemed to be and especially spiritually and artistically satisfying Homecoming Concert.  Afterwards, an attractive middle-aged lady stopped me and began to tell me how she loved the evening and how much it meant to her. I thought maybe she would mention the depth of one of my lyrics to a song, or the impact of some deep concept one of the other artists had shared. But no. Instead, she said, “I have not laughed this hard in years. I’d almost forgotten I could. And you have no idea how much I needed to laugh. Thank you all for tonight.” Now I ask you: was what we were doing ministry? Was it entertainment? Yes. Yes. Next question.

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Margaret Effie Boster

I thought my grandmother (my mother’s mother) was the wisest person on earth.  She seemed to know everything:  the names of the trees, the herbs to use for poultices or making teas that could cure fever and sore throat and nausea and cramps, and the names of the heavenly constellations.  She knew the best way to catch a catfish or set the broken leg of a goose.  She could make a designer dress with lining, lace, and covered buttons, but she could also saw sheets of dry walling into manageable pieces, nail them to the studs, strip the seams, plaster the unfinished wall, and then paint it when the plaster was dry.

She taught me to never tell a lie, believe a braggart, trust a man who would kick his dog, or to argue with a fool. Because of her and her daughter (my mother), I learned a that a job is never finished until it is done, that garden tools should not be put away until they are hosed off and oiled, and that you weren’t done fishing until the worms were stripped from the hook and the line was rolled tightly and secured.  She taught me to notice weeds and tears and silence.  She showed me how to pay attention to the color of the clouds, the way leaves turn silver-side-up before a storm, and the sound of the wind when it gets still before a tornado.

She was suspicious of people who always had to affix blame or who needed to take credit.  She paid her tithe, mowed her own lawn, and took the tulip and iris bulbs with her when she moved.  She had her own definition of “clean”, and it was way beyond not being able to see dirt.

Her faith seemed to be tied to her faithfulness; she seldom asked God for special favors until she’d done what she knew to do.  She believed a person best showed love by doing the right thing, putting oneself out for someone else, and not being indulgent to make up for the guilt of not doing what you should have done in the first place.

I loved her stories because they were real, not made up.  My favorites were the stories about how she sewed the muslin cover to slip over the bones of a wagon that she and Johnny then hooked up to a team of horses to go from Missouri to Wyoming to lay claim to a homestead.  Along the way, she told me, they would stop at night and join other covered wagons to build a fire, cook their supper, and share reports about the safety and dangers of the trail over which they had just come.

When Margaret Effie and Johnny got to Wyoming, they built a sod house to protect the family from the elements and began the backbreaking job of coaxing a farm out of the thick thatch of the prairie.  Maybe this life-experience and the many more about which she told me, shaped the grandmother I knew.  She was not a warm, fuzzy person.  I don’t remember her hugging me a lot or very often telling me she loved me. I was in awe of her.  But the skills and personal disciplines she modeled every day of her life helped to shape the way I come at life to this day.  For her, God was never the “great sugar-daddy in the sky’’ or the genie in the jug. He was the One with whom she was yoked in the great work of life, tilling fields, sowing seeds, expecting—then being good stewards of—the harvest.  He was the one who helped her find her needle, the neighbor who helped her locate the “pearl of great price,” or the friend who searched with her all day, if need be, to find the lost coin.

Because of her I know that God is my co-worker, my wise advisor, my strength when the task is beyond me, and the healer of broken bones, broken tools, and broken hearts.  Because of her, Margaret Effie Boster, I know that whatever I can bring to the task is enough, because God my co-worker, is more than enough.

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See You at the House

If you were to ask me about the passing of Gary McSpadden, I could give you some printable facts.  He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and spent his last days at the Tulsa Cancer Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Before the actual specific kind of cancer could be pinpointed, a series of strokes prevented the treatment for the cancer from ever beginning.  He died on April 15, 2020. 

I could tell you he was born on January 26, 1943, to Helen and Boyd McSpadden and grew up as a “preacher’s kid” in Lubbock, Texas, himself eventually becoming a pastor. He married Carol Cornett from Dallas, Texas, at the Quartet Convention on October 14, 1962, with the ceremony performed by Hovie Lister.   I could tell you that he and Carol had two children, Shawn and Michelle, whom Gary adored, and that he currently pastored with Carol the Faith and Wisdom Church in Branson, Missouri. But the Gary Bill and I knew, the husband Carol walked beside for 57 years, the dad their children loved, well, that Gary eludes the items in an obituary.

Growing up literally in church, as we pastors’ kids know, brings some great advantages, like being exposed to the Gospel from our first breath.  The great hymns and gospel songs were our lullabies; our first memories were the moments when the breathing community around us was corporately moved by the breath of the Holy Spirit.  But there were a few disadvantages.  The expectations we felt made big demands on us, sometimes before we had the maturity to live up to them.

Gary with the Statesman

Gary grew up in a singing family, so singing was like breathing to him and his sister Cheryl.  They were also beautiful children that got attention by just walking into the room.  Ready or not, at 18 years old, Gary got a call from one of the best known groups ever to sing gospel music, the Statesmen Quartet, to fill in for the iconic lead singer Jake Hess.  That early exposure got the attention of another group, the Oak Ridge Quartet, with whom Gary then made three label albums.

Fast on the heels of that mind-boggling success came the call that Jake Hess was forming a new group that would be called the Imperials.  This was the first group in gospel music that got my attention.  The harmonies, the rhythm feels, the songs they chose were fresh and new.  The sound was professional and polished.

Gary with the new Imperials

The Imperials on stage

Gary with the Imperials

Gary with the Oak Ridge Boys

About this time, Bill had drafted me to sing with him and his brother Danny when their sister went to college.  I wasn’t a professional singer by any means—just a kid who had grown up in church singing a bit, as most PKs do, but much more comfortable writing and speaking.  But Bill insisted he could “make it work”, so for ten years, we sang as the Gaither Trio.  When Danny left the Trio, it was Gary who came to sing with us.  He was like the brother I never had.  He was kind, protective, and always gracious about my insecurity as a singer.

Trio live

Bill Gaither Trio

Bill Gaither Trio

Bill Gaither Trio

Bill Gaither Trio

Trio singing for Rex Humbard Easter special in Israel

Press conference about Israel preformances in Israel that Polly Grimes (on right) promoted.

Rehearsing with Amy in Gary's lap

Rehearsing fro concert and musical “He Started the Whole World Singing” in Jerusalem.

Crowd shot Trio at Praise Gathering

Beautiful Carol became like a sister to me, too, and the four of us traveled every week-end for another ten years.  Bill’s dad had retired by then, and he and Carol handled our product on the road.  How George loved Carol!  Our children and the McSpadden kids were together often and formed easy relationships that last to this day.

Our families around the picnic table at the gazebo

It was the gentle spirit and the kindness of Gary and Carol that so often kept me going when we had three kids in their pre-teen years of our own.  When the Trio gradually moved from auditoriums to arena-sized venues, we added four back-up singers and some brass to our stage.  Bill had always loved the male quartet sound; one night during intermission Bill and Gary and the two men from the vocal group, Steve Green and Lee Young, gathered around a backstage piano and started singing Stuart Hamblen’s great song “My First Day in Heaven”.  Bill said, “Let’s try this on the second half!”

The first Vocal Band with Lee Young and Steve Green

VB with Larnelle and John Moore

VB with Larnelle and Michael English

Gaither Vocal Band induction in to the Hall of Fame

The people loved it, and the four of them had a ball singing it.  The song and the 4-part harmony feature stayed, gradually adding another song or two.  What came to be known as the Gaither Vocal Band was born, with Gary as the original lead.

Years and experiences have bound Gary and Carol and their family to our family in a beautiful long-term relationship.  When I asked their son Shawn to describe his dad in one quality, he said, “Consistent.  Consistent in faith, consistent in love, consistent in guidance.  My whole life he was a consistent father.” 

I couldn’t agree more.  For Bill and me, Gary was a consistent friend.  Just a few weeks ago Bill and Gary were planning the upcoming Vocal Band Reunion that was to have taken place at the Maybe Center in Tulsa; they were discussing what songs might feature Gary on that night. 

“Let’s go in early and just you and I and Gloria and Carol go get some Mexican food before rehearsal,” Bill had suggested.

“Great plan!  We’d love to!” was one of the last things Gary ever said to Bill until we talked by phone to him at the Cancer Center at the end. But there isn’t an end to the conversation, is there?  It’s just, as Bob Benson used to say, “See you at the House!”

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