This Second Week of the New Year

This second week of the New Year, the journey continues.

The star promises that the Messiah is already a reality in this earthen world and hints that there are those who have found Him—some have even embraced Him. Yet for even those who are wise enough to seek, this day is a desert day of dust and sand, plodding and enduring—until the star stops.

Artist buses at National Quarter Convention 2025

Most of us believers—who travel in caravan—visualize as we go where that star-place will be. We can’t help feeling that the place must be wonderful—an oasis, a resort, a fine abode fit for a King.

Like those first travelers, we are way too literal minded to keep focused on the wonder of the Incarnate One, Himself—that He is the wonder.

Will we be disappointed with the destination of this day’s journey when we find no place spectacular? Will we, like the poet, miss the glory of the summit because of bramble distractions?

Lord, today as every day, the hope of finding You on my journey—that starring promise—guides and pulls me along the dusty way.

Satisfy my seeking heart with the pleasant reality of Your sweet Self,
resting there in the familiar surroundings
of common things.

And, Lord, fill me with gratitude for Your provisions along my way to You.

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Party Animal and Friends

Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.
~ Psalms 69:20         

Still today it is the same. Everyone loves a party. The crowd tunes in to the power of positive thinking, but that attention gets very short if the positive thinking is long-term and entails some getting worse before it gets better.

Throw a free picnic and you can't keep an accurate count of the multitudes that show up. But drag those same folks to Gethsemane at night with Calvary in view, and you lose their attention, even if, on some grand philosophical plane, they profess to understand.

Esteem seems to be generated by being the bold and the beautiful, the wealthy and the powerful.

But lay down the power, become poor, quit being a party animal, and let the tears flow, turn ugly from pain, and you, too, will be able to count your friends on one hand.

But oh, what true friends!

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Rest In You Tonight

We know the story of Christmas.  Many of us can quote it from Luke 2 from memory, because it was read to us every Christmas since we can remember. The wise men from the East were part of the church pageant that we helped play years ago.  A stable with animals, a manger, shepherds with lambs, bright angels, kings with precious gifts—all these have surrounded the baby Christ-child, until now they seem more fable than a reality so quietly profound that it changed the course of history.

Maybe this particular December, this story seems more “sweet” and “nice” than earthshaking. But when we snap back into reality from magical ambience of Christmas days, we are more likely to cry for a solution to the world’s, and our own personal chaos.  In our individual story, this God sometimes seems so far away.

Broken hearts, broken homes, broken children, broken churches, broken communities and, yes, our own broken country—all cry together for this Jesus to please come on down from His throne in heaven and comfort our children, mend our families, and restore some kind of idealized normality to our world. There seems to be a disconnect between our Christmas wonder and the shambles we have together (or apart) made of things.

In a song (“Rest in You Tonight”) that Bill wrote with Gerald Crabb, there is a picture of a lonely child peering through a frozen window, watching for a dad that really isn’t coming home with gifts for this Christmas Eve...or ever.

But the promise of that star and manger, stable, and host of angels is this:  our Father did and always does come home to where we are.  And no matter what chaos rages around us outside, the HERE He came to, was the home of our hearts.  He came to bring peace and joy, and the best gifts ever to fill the hole in our souls.

Hark! The angels sing!  Again and again and again! Yes, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Him—tonight!

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Remembering a Country Christmas

I believe there is a homing device in every human heart.  Even if we’ve never had a good home to go home to, there is an innate yearning for one where we are cherished and understood.  In our yearning, we see this as a place of peace where there is no pretense and where we are accepted for who we truly are--not for what we’ve accomplished or how we look.

And there is no time like Christmas for pulling us back to such a place.  Usually, how much we love and look forward to Christmas as a holiday is in direct proportion to how close to this ideal our home really is.  Sadly for many, the reality of the holiday is one of the most painful experiences of the year.

Perhaps the reason we cling to the ideal at Christmas more than any other time is that this celebration is in honor of the One who came to bring true peace, joy, love, and a place to belong.  And the truth is that no family home and no human relationship can ever totally give us what we need.  Every parent fails sometimes.  Even love falls short.  Every child disappoints and turns prodigal at one time or another.  No sibling is totally supportive or faithful to protect the secrets with which he or she has been entrusted.

Even so, home is the nearest thing we have to a metaphor for belonging.  The imperfection of us all keeps us yearning for another place--the place that will truly be Home. 

Thankfully, our memories tend to preserve the good and forgive the flawed.  I’m sure my Grandma’s house in the country was not as good as I remember it.  The “front room”, as she called it, was not as big, the kitchen not as warm, the snows not as white or as deep as I remember trudging through to get to that farmhouse with the fieldstone porch.

As I recall, she and grandpa opened the big double doors to that front room only for special occasions.  The piano was in there, and she would always have the old itinerate piano tuner come just before Christmas so we could sing carols around that piano when we all crowded in.

The Christmas tree she put in that room was not a pine, but a cedar tree Pa would cut fresh from the woods behind the barn.  The ornaments were of World War II vintage and before–scenes painted on clear glass balls–and there were strips of foil we called icicles, big lights of every color, and real candy canes.  Grandma would always make fresh popcorn balls with sorghum molasses, wrap them in a new thing called Saran Wrap® and hang them on the tree for us kids to “snitch” when no one was looking.

Grandma baked for days before Christmas: pies of apples and cherries from their orchard, fudge, taffy, and “divinity” layered in boxes between buttered sheets of waxed paper, cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and homemade bread.  These were all prepared before the real cooking started.

To this day I find myself running my fingers over mixing bowls in antique shops that have brown and gold sheaves of wheat on them or picking up green Fire King baking dishes and pie pans, longing to take them home to see if they would somehow turn things I make into the magical tastes of my childhood for my grandkids to remember.

Country life always seemed to separate the boys and the men from the women and girls.  The guys would “mosey” out to the barn to talk to Pa while he milked the two cows they always kept to supply them with milk and butter.  The boys would help him throw down hay for the night, feed the cats, and gather the eggs from the henhouse.  On summer mornings gathering eggs was Grandma’s job, but in the winter when she was less sure of her footing, Pa brought in the eggs.

Meanwhile, the women would take up stations in the kitchen peeling potatoes, opening jars of green beans Grandma had canned the summer before, and cutting up squash, onions, Brussels sprouts, and turnips.  The girls would set the table in the living room, then work on the puzzle that became a family project all through the days of Christmas. 

I don’t remember much about the gifts.  They were simple, practical, and usually handmade.  I do remember hugs and thank you’s.  I remember Grandma loving whatever I gave her as if she’d been wanting it all her life. I have a picture of someone in our family holding up a string of pearls, probably ordered from the Sears catalog--“the wish book,” we called it-–and looking as if this necklace was as precious and rare as diamonds.

There was never any doubt why we had Christmas.  Since Grandma had lost most of her eyesight, my daddy read the Christmas story from Luke while the children sat on someone’s lap or on the floor leaning back on some seated grownup’s knees.  We all knew the words by heart, but familiar as they were, they always brought tears to our eyes – like we were hearing this wonderful story for the first time.

Grandma would pray, and when she prayed, the angels quit fidgeting around, swishing their wings, and got still.  We knew that sooner or later every one of our names would be specifically mentioned; Grandma would thank the Lord for the gift of each one of us and ask His tender care and guidance as we grew and changed and became what He intended for us to be. It seems to me now, looking back, that I was the most adored of children, and I know all the grandchildren would say they thought they were.  Truth is we all were.

After prayer and presents, the music would begin.  Grandma played both the piano and the guitar; Pa played the “fiddle” and the “mouth harp”.  We all knew sooner or later he’d grab Grandma by the arm and try to make her dance around the room; she’d say, “Oh, Pop, quit!”  And we’d all laugh.

The children would ask for their favorite of the songs that Grandma had always sung to them: “Redwing”, “Mockingbird Hill”, or “Listen to the Mockingbird”.  It never seemed strange that all our favorite songs were about birds. 

We also sang Grandma’s favorites: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, “I Must Tell Jesus”, and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”.

As night fell and the kerosene lamps were lit, it seems to me that the love in that house could be touched, like soft velvet or the smooth fur of a kitten.  The snow could pile to the eaves for all we cared.  We were home, we were fed, and we were loved.

When Bill and I started thinking about recording a video for Christmas with the Homecoming Friends that would be Christmas in the Country, it was the images of Christmas at Grandma’s house that came to mind.  To that, I added the memories of my own childhood home and the rituals that have been now handed down first to Bill and me, then to our children, and now to their children.

Someday there will be a new celebration in a new Country.  There will be no gap between the ideal and the reality; the relationships around that circle will be perfect and totally beautiful.  There will be songs of thanksgiving and praise for Christmas completed, for the One who brought heaven to earth will have then brought earth to heaven, and we will all finally be Home. 

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Repeating a Love Song

It was just over eight years ago that I posted my first blog.  Now 294 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 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 carousel.  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 eight years and 294 blogs since I started would never have been believed. A very contagious virus 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 buried, mostly without funerals, 200,000 Americans.  This certainly got 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.”

Bill and I are songwriters.  I am a lyricist.  I’ve been writing the words to music for more than sixty-three 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!”

Through 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 63 years, you would have the only biography I may ever write.  These are milestones of my journey.

Like the series of pieces I once 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 those were Simple Prayers, these pieces called “blogs” are love songs—love songs to my life.

So I stop, 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 from our life in our old house on the hillside is that what we really “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 blogs have been--and will continue to be--the lived-out love songs to my life.

If any of these Love Songs to My Life resonate with you, we would love to hear from you.

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I Know How to Say Thank You

This year marks the 59th Thanksgiving we have spent in the house we built when Bill and I were teaching high school English.  Our house has always been the Thanksgiving place. We have enjoyed gatherings of 40 and more from both sides of our family. Bill’s parents and my parents have been a part of this gathering along with my sister and her family and Bill’s siblings and their children.  

As the older generation has left our family circle, their spirits have not. They all continued to be a part of our celebration of gratitude, as we retold to each new generation the stories each of the patriarchs and matriarchs made famous.

Always a part of Thanksgiving, too, have been single parents and their children, our kids’ college friends who could not go home for the short holiday because they were from other countries or states too far away, and friends who no longer had family in the area. The families of our grown children’s spouses have been a delightful part of our celebration, as well. So lots of cousins, friends, grandkids, and drop-in guests have formed teams for driveway basketball, music bands, and groups for harmonizing. Fortunately, we always had guitarists, bass players, drummers, and keyboardists in our circle who shared a repertoire of pop songs, gospel tunes, and 80s rock classics.

The center of our Thanksgiving, however, has always been the sharing of the Indian corn. The youngest child had the honor of passing a little turkey-shaped basket filled with kernels of Indian corn to everyone gathered around our farm kitchen. Then I am usually the one to tell the story of the 102 passengers and 30 crew who set sail for a 66-day trip across the rough Atlantic in a ship called the Mayflower. That first winter took almost half of their lives as provisions dwindled and disease took its toll.  

It was friendly native Americans who, come spring, taught the remnant of survivors to plant crops that would grow in the new land: corn, beans, squash and herbs. About 40 of these first “pilgrims” were separatists who were seeking freedom to worship away from the state-run religions. Others of the group were secularists who came for adventure, prosperity, or a fresh start in a new land. That first harvest and the game and fish from the new land became the first day of feasting, games, and music in gratitude for not only the harvest, but life itself.

Often, we read aloud the poem by Felicia Doretha Hemans “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.” As the little basket is passed again, each person drops a kernel of corn into it, and he or she tells what they are most thankful for since we were gathered in this circle last year. Every year for 59 years the year has brought joy, pain, breakthroughs, some losses, and many years a new baby. The privilege of expressing to each other our gratitude for someone’s kindness, someone’s support, someone’s encouragement, someone’s forgiveness is an unforgettable moment.  

This simple tradition makes us all so glad to be alive, to be together, and to be so blessed by the delicious spread on our kitchen island, groaning with everyone’s special contribution to the feast.

One year, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bill and I wrote a letter to our loved ones, telling them that we wouldn’t be gathering in this great old house. We sent a big puzzle to each family, looking forward to a time when we can once again spread the puzzle pieces across our cleared dining room table and make together a grand scene that can never be complete without each person’s pieces.

But not being able to carve a turkey together cannot keep us from being grateful. It cannot cancel the memories we’ve shared or the music we’ve made, or the crafts we’ve created together after dinner is cleared away. It cannot silence the voices of our elders who have put so much into our family DNA, nor cancel the greater impact of their teaching, prayers, and life-skills they’ve built into us all by example, humor, and hard work.

I look at the history of our country and the years since that first Thanksgiving, and have to admit that, like most big families, our nation has made some mistakes and have at times hurt each other and been anything but Christ-like to each other. But even so, I know how to say “thank you,” as our daughter Suzanne and her husband Barry wrote in their song. And one thing for which I am most thankful is that our loving Lord deals with us all not only with justice but with mercy and grace. May all families grant these holy gifts to each other.

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The Arrow and the Song

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.  Someday, 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 lifeline 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 (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 anthropologists and historians 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 lowest form of 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 “Icabod” 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 or 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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Buying Time

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 my parents’ house while we were out on the road singing. Benjy and his wife 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 Sundays, 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 then 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 F.B. Fogg found a place in his nursery.

Our daughter Amy 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. 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 those 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 become lethal, killing the soul. Unforgettable.

 I thought of that trilogy of songs when the COVID-19 epidemic forced social distancing, too much time alone, and isolation from the happy interaction of family gatherings became 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 really do need each other!

It is important to be aware that there are 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 timekeeping 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 could 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 Kairos out of the hours of Chronos time we are given on this earth, something that will transcend time and space and go on after time and space shall end.

Today 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 each day isn't just another day to be driven by our cell phones. It is a 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 really listening--and seeing in everyone's insight a kernel of truth--a treasure we may not have recognized before.  And it is that something more, 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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It Is A Marathon

When I was in elementary school, we had what was called Field Day.  The whole school was involved, and we could sign up ahead of time for the field event for which we felt most suited.  There were standing broad jump, running broad jump, the high jump, the discus throw, a relay race, and the 100-yard dash. 

I wasn’t very athletic.  I couldn’t even throw a softball well enough to make girl’s village summer team, so discus throwing was out of my league entirely, and only tall girls with long legs seemed to excel at the 100-yard dash. So I always tried the running broad jump and the high jump.  For the broad jump, someone stood at the side of the sawdust pit to mark and measure how far from the jumping line the contestant landed.  More graceful, stronger kids always beat me in that one.

The high jump was performed by jumping over a cane pole, resting on pegs in two parallel vertical posts.  The slightest touch would dislodge the pole.  The object was to get a running start, then hurl one’s body over the pole.  Each successful try was followed by the official moving the pole up one increment on the posts.  The long, lean type was always superior to me in that event.

You can understand, then, why the metaphor of a race has not been the scriptural comparison to most inspire me.  A wave of fifth-grade nausea always seemed to rise in my stomach whenever I read Hebrews 12 and felt Paul start in on me as a runner, and the spiritual journey as a Field Day.

But now that I am older and wiser, I am coming to believe that the race so often referred to in the Bible is not a 100-yard dash or a broad jump (running or standing), or a high jump or discus throw.  I don’t believe that these verses are even about competing or winning.  The race, I am discovering, is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and the object of this life event is to endure and finish!

 It doesn’t matter whether I run, jog, or eventually manage to drag my pulsating, throbbing body over the finish line.  The point is to finish, and get there without giving up.  I’m coming to see that whenever I think I can’t go another inch, there is a support team running alongside to catch me when my knees buckle.  There are fans in the bleachers all along the well-planned and chosen course that have long since found this race possible by finishing it themselves.  At every bend in the track, there they are, cheering and encouraging at the top of their lungs.  “Yes! Yes, you can! You can make it!”  In the Body of Christ, that’s what friends are for.

And I am finally coming to know that endurance is what the Coach is after. He’s not interested in spurts of flashy athletic prowess.  He isn’t impressed by sleek bodies, rippling muscles, or perfect form.  It’s commitment and determination He adores. It’s the earnest, passionate pursuit of the goal that makes Him proud—staying the course, keeping the faith, and enjoying the journey.

The trophy for this event is engraved not with “First Place Winner” or “Most Valuable Player”, but with “Faithful to the End”.   I, even I, can sign up with confidence for that.  I may not be good, but I can be stubbornly and joyfully persistent to the end! 

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A Fistful of Keys

I could write my life in keys.  The first key I remember was to our 1878 farmhouse my parents bought after we moved back from Intercession City, Florida, where daddy had been in Bible College.  It was a squarish house that I now know was in the Federalist style of architecture.  It was just down the gravel county road from my grandparents’ small farm outside Burlington, Michigan.

Skeleton Key

There was no inside plumbing or running water, but the house was one of my favorite childhood memories. The key to the front and back doors was what Daddy called a “skeleton key,” I guess because it had a thin back bone, a round head, and notched feet that unlocked the door.

Vintage Ford

Then there was the key to my grandfather’s 1932 Ford.  That was key to the adventure of running boards, scratchy horsehair upholstery, and putt-putt-putting down the country roads at the speed of a tortoise.  When my pastor-parents were out of town for a church convention or state board meetings, Grandpa and Grandma would drive into town to pick me up from school. I sat on the prickly back seat with my chin on the windowsill to watch the farmers plowing the fields or harvesting the crops.  Sometimes a killdeer would limp away from the edge of the road to distract us invaders from her eggs that she had literally laid in the edge of the road, where it was hard to tell the gravel from her small spotted eggs.

Daddy and Mother had a “wad” of keys.  I always wondered how they knew where they went. Some went to the church and its various doors; some went to our parsonage, to my grandmother’s mobile home, and my other grandparents’ farmhouse, though they ever locked only the front door to their house.  On my grandparents’ back stoop there was a bolt that went through a hole in the thick wooden door.  The bolt had a string attached to it with a ring on the end, and the string ran through a wooden block nailed beside the door.  The string with its ring hung in the corner beside the door where grandma propped a mop on its handle so the mop could hide the string.  We just knew to move the mop, grab the ring, and pull so that the bolt would slide out of the holes holding the door. Tight security!

Years later as a budding lyricist, I was to hear a song by Stuart Hamblen, one of the greatest songwriters of all time, that had this line:                            
Each day is a measure on life’s little string;
When reaching its ending, tired eyes will behold
The string tied to the door latch of my Father’s house—
One day nearer home.
I knew exactly what that image meant, though he didn’t mention the mop.

Vintage Clamp-on Roller Skate

I had two treasured keys of my own, too:  the key to my sidewalk skates and a tiny key to a diary I got for my birthday one year.  The diary key was so small that I was afraid I’d lose it, so I kept it tied with a ribbon to my journal.   What I wrote was never very secret-secure.  Ah, but my skate key!  That I kept on a string around my neck.  Every recess and noon hour, I would skate the sidewalks and black-topped teachers’ parking lot around the school with my friends.  Unless there was too much ice and snow, we were skating. Skating was our passion!  Skates for sidewalk skating had no boot, then, but clamped onto our saddle shoes; the key closed the clamps until they were tight.  The skates also had a leather strap that buckled into place around our ankles to hold the skates in place.

Now the keys to my grown-up life hang on a key holder by our back door.  One day when Benjy was small, one of his friends ask him why his parents had so many keys.  “Because they have a lot of keyholes, I guess,” he answered.  I think that is as good an answer as any.  Gates, padlocks, ignitions of cars, trucks, buses, golf carts, guest houses, utility closets, garages—all these have need of keys. Some have been there so long, we’re not sure what they go to, but we’re afraid to throw them away in case the keyhole is still somewhere in our lives.

Hearts and minds and souls have keys, too, and once we discover the key, and someone opens up to us, well, we just never throw away that key. But hearts and souls must be opened with integrity.  No heart may be ripped off or broken into when using spiritual keys.  These keys must never be used to control tender hearts or to take advantage of the innate longing for Love hidden deep in every soul.

Here are the keys Saint Paul gave us—fruit of the Spirit, he called them.  These are well-made keys that never stick or get jammed, but open the strongest bolt locks smoothly and without force.  These keys have names engraved on them.  Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness.  Goodness.  Faithfulness. Gentleness.  Self-control.  How our locked-up relationships need this fistful of keys!

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Natural Habitat for Human Beings

In my life I have been given many wonderful gifts: lovely handmade embroidered items, expensive works of art, earthy rustic crafts, primitive water paintings on simple newsprint created by the chubby little hands of children. I have been honored and complimented. As a lyricist I have had the thrill of hearing the songs I’ve helped to create recorded by famous singers and sung by congregations in our own and many other languages. These are all gifts I treasure.

But none of these gifts have been so valuable to me as the gift of a rich childhood and youth in a solid, loving, celebrating home. The heritage of a family who loved God and each other, who greeted every new day with anticipation and openness, shaped my values and taught me that life was good. The healthy balance of discipline and freedom, the love of simple things, the respect for all kinds of persons, a deep reverence for God--all these wrapped up in special moments and given to me in the package I call my childhood.

I truly believe that most of what I’ve been able to do with my life has been a direct result of the rich heritage I enjoyed. I am certain that my family gave me a head start on life with a realistic concept of God and His Son, a love affair with nature, and an excitement for living. My home brought me to the threshold of adulthood with a secure confidence that I was loved, and a deep responsibility to myself and the world around me for developing whatever special abilities and gifts God had given me.

Young Gloria and her sister, Evelyn

My mother, who was an artist and writer, taught my sister and me to see what many others missed. She gave us a deep appreciation for beauty and books and a great love for words and language. Daddy was the master of spur-of-the-moment parties on a shoestring: a Dairy Queen after church, a roadside picnic breakfast, the presentation of a special dress he’d scrimped to buy for Mother for an important event.

It was Daddy who gave me my very own garden spot (even though he had to dig up the thick, green sod to do it) and gave me full rein to plant anything I wanted to. I learned from him the joy of “preferring one another,” as every summer we would take fishing trips to the far north because Mother loved to fish. I remember him digging fishing worms, cleaning bass and catfish until midnight, lugging soggy rowboats into and out of the lakes, and rowing for miles, all for the joy of seeing Mother get so much fun out of “hooking a big one.”

Three generations - Gloria’s mother, Gloria, and her daughters Suzanne and Amy

At our house everything was an event, and it was to our house that Evelyn’s and my friends always came to “hang out”; we knew that if we needed a place for a gathering of any kind, it was okay to volunteer our place. Mother was the confidante for many a teenager, and it was not uncommon for someone in distress to knock on our door at midnight seeking comfort and advice. It never occurred to me to keep anything from her. She was my best friend. Soon our own children were running to her house whenever they needed someone to talk to or simply a place to be. She taught our son to paint with oils and to see things in a world around him that others miss. She critiqued our daughters’ poetry and boyfriends. She was their best friend too.

Bill’s parents, George and Lela

When I married Bill, I found another big, loving family – an Indiana farm family, who loved the earth and celebrated harvests and holidays, Sundays and birthdays with big dinners and warm family gatherings: tables groaning with home-grown vegetables, fresh corn-fed meat, and steaming fruit desserts; children of all ages and sizes scampering around the patriarchs and assorted distant relations; the joyous noise of adult conversation, shrieking children, and spontaneous music.

Because we so appreciate our own heritages, Bill and I chose to live near both our families. We believed there was great value for our children in knowing their roots, which gave them a sense of perspective and continuity. In a society as mobile as the one we all live in, Bill and I feel very blessed that we were able to offer our children a close relationship with their extended family and close friendships with their young cousins and aging relatives. Living close to our extended family has not always been problem-free, but we feel the benefits far outweigh any problems.  Good or bad, family is family and life is life. Children need a realistic view of the influences that have come together to make up the sum total of what they are.

As Bill and I welcomed Suzanne, Amy, and Benjy into the world, we drew from the rich heritage we had been given to work toward becoming the kind of caring, compassionate family we believed God wanted us to be. Now our children and most of their children have homes of their own, and Bill and I find great delight in watching them and their spouses pass on to our grandchildren the principles our parents gave us. We are all still “kids under construction,” fed and nourished in the soil of our shared pasts from the seeds God has planted in us. Just as our parents contributed so much to our children’s memory banks, we are now helping to make memories for our children’s children, and soon, their children. 

The home is the natural habitat for growing human beings and shaping eternal souls. Every moment, whether we know it or not, we are molding new generations of lives. Let’s make these precious moments count. 

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The Thread of Life

Life is like a spool of golden thread.  The thread is placed in the hand of a newborn who holds it while the thread is pulled through day by day by the ones around who love him. But soon the awareness of familiar faces, food, smells, sounds, and gentle touches begins the learning process of holding the thread of life in his own hands.

A child learning “all them new things”—as Bob Benson quotes his little son Tom as saying when watching his baby brother Patrick—soon grasps the thread and begins the rushing through the thread of new discoveries to the next adventure so fast there is not time for considering.  With so much cord yet to unwind, the child can’t wait to ponder today’s piece but lets it fall behind him for the fascination of what is yet to be run through the fingers.

The thread, though sparkling and golden, is thin at first with little dimension. There is just too much excitement about what comes next!  Gradually, though, the thread of the growing child begins to have some texture and volume; she begins to recognize that each day’s discovery comes with a memory of other days and other similar times and brings a history to the new experiences.

Trials and errors, joys and disappointments start to give each day’s learning some context.  The drawing of each new adventure begins to be painted on the background of blue sky (or gray), water or desert, flatlands or mountains.  The thrill of something new is tempered by past memories.

As adolescence turns into adulthood, each new measure of golden thread has, itself, dimension and volume, for braided into it is former fibers of laughter and tears, past successes and failures, remembered joys and sorrows of earlier explorations.

As the thread of life passes the midpoint of the spool, perspective is added to the texture.  Whereas the goal of earlier pursuits might have been knowledge and adventure, the latter half of life, hopefully, becomes the quest for wisdom and depth.  Instead of life-experiment being about the pursual of things tangible, material, and immediate, there comes a vacuum that only things intangible and spiritual can fill.

The longer one lives, the more substantial grows the golden thread, either encumbered with the baggage of possessions and reputations or enriched by appreciation and gratitude for insights and deep relationships.  There comes a sense of “rewinding” the spool, savoring each experienced-before place, friendship, family gathering, and holiday with the perspective and appreciation that only a history with God can give.

No wonder the Psalmist sang, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  He could well have sung “Taste and see and touch and hear and smell the wonder of life, because all good and perfect gifts come from above”.

Parents can teach children from the start to notice—to taste the tastes, to feel the textures (and feel the feelings), to hear the sounds, to see the beauty, and smell the aromas of life. Perhaps only the rewinding of life’s golden thread, can intensify the depth of gratitude and teach the deep wisdom in savoring life.

Finally, all the disconnect of individual experiences are gradually braided into the thread of life until we literally see that thread tied to the Bright and Morning Star, blown by the Mighty Rushing Wind into the presence of one who is Faithful and True—The Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End of our fragile golden thread of Life.

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Home--The Most Loaded Word

Writers, especially poets, learn to choose words that come with their own built-in emotional baggage.  This is especially true when one wants to say a lot in as few words as possible.  The right well-chosen few words can cover more territory than a whole carelessly constructed paragraph.

One of the words that carries such built-in DNA is the word home.  There are other words listed in the thesaurus as synonyms: house, dwelling, abode, residence.  See what I mean? Home says more.

 Most of us have lived in several houses.  We have had many addresses.  We have built or bought different styles of dwellings and stayed there long enough for them to qualify as residences.  But home, well, that’s another story.  If your heart says you need to go home, where would that be?  What does that place look like in your mind?

Some of us would say it’s the place we now live; the place we raised our babies and planted our gardens and decorated rooms to suit the tastes and activities of our family.  Others of us would name a place we haven’t been in years; the homeplace where grandma lived, or daddy built, or the kids grew up.

For some, home means a part of the country that shaped our view of things or gave us our roots.  The South or the Plains, the Smokies or Colorado.  Some of us long for the lake country or the red dirt of Georgia, the coast, or the wide-open spaces of the old west.

Some long for a home they’ve never had.  Abuse, estrangement, mobility, or divorce may have kept them from ever having a sense of place.  On the outside looking in, they’ve ached in some deep place to identify with that tone in others’ voices they hear when they say “home.”

This is the season for going home. Making our way back to the place and the people that shaped us, helps us remember who we are.  It helps us remember the stories, hopefully the good ones, that we want to pass on to our children so they will know who they are, too. Sadly for far too many, though, this is the time for digging deeper into a commitment to recovery from pain, estrangement, or alienation.

The good news is that whether or not we have had a healthy shaping place, we are being called by one, nevertheless.  One way or another we can all go home.  That’s what the gospel is all about. That is what this Jesus we follow came to do: to bring all the lost children of the Father to the only perfect home.  And when we get there, we’ll know our hearts have been there all along.  We’ll hear the only perfect Father—say, “Welcome home, my child.  I’ve been waiting for you!”

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IN GOOD HANDS

Did you ever handle a mud dauber's nest? It, like us, is made from the breath and saliva of its maker mixed with a little dusty earth. If a strong hand holds one, it must be tender, or it will crumble. Even when the hand is trying to be careful.

God holds just such a fragile creation in His mighty hand. He knows that we are dust because He made us Himself from the dust of the earth and His own breath. When things happen to us in the natural course of life on this earth, we feel as if we are about to crumble and sometimes ignorantly ask, "Is God doing this to me? Why is He being so hard on me? What have I done to deserve this?"

Don't fool yourself; if God were being hard on you, His mighty hand would make a puff of smoke out of you. No, His hand is holding you, tenderly, surrounding you so that the pulverizing forces of life won't destroy you.

Do you deserve His mercy? Or life's storms? That is beside the point. He loves you—that's all.
He feels deeply sorry that you hurt so. He has removed your transgressions from you and holds you in His hands. He remembers that you are dust. Psalm 103 says it best:
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.

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Steal Away

If Jesus himself had to “get away” to detox from the press of the crowd and the demands of His calling, if the Lord himself had to escape “to a quiet place” to hear from Home and have sweet communion with his Father, then I am not about to beat myself up anymore when I just have to disappear sometimes to restore my soul. 

There was a time when I thought I had to justify my time of solitude—write something publishable or be able to see the result of time alone in actual product.  But no more!  I am coming to believe that finding my spiritual tank on EMPTY is reason enough.  And I don’t have to rationalize, even to myself, spending a day at the cabin or in my potting shed just reading, painting, or even taking a nap.  Empty is dangerous, and whatever it takes to refill my soul is wisdom, not foolishness.

We live in a culture in which success is rated by product.  How much can we do?  How much ground can we cover?  How many appointments can we keep?  What is our output? 

The teaching of Jesus is counter-culture.  Jesus says:
“Consider the lilies...”
“He who would be greatest must be servant of all…”
“Become like a child if you want to be in My Kingdom… “
“Don’t be anxious about tomorrow...”

We are called to walk this earth, but in walking the earth some of the mud sticks to our feet.  In time it’s hard to tell where the mud stops and our feet begin.  Maybe that’s why we are called to wash each other’s feet:  to get ourselves free of the dirt so that we can, then, walk the earth again.

Over the years there have been several times when a motley group of burned-out artists have gathered on a mountain top or by a state park lake to eat together, sing together, confess our frailties, and rest from the road. We took quiet walks through the woods, paddled some kayaks across the lake, and prayed together.  We laughed our heads off and wandered off sometimes to be alone.  Don’t ask what happened there.  It was too precious to violate the sweet trust that emerged.  I’m just saying the time was more valuable than gold.  Literally.

Time to restore is valuable—whether the stolen time is alone or with others in community. No product needed. Just a rejuvenated soul is treasure enough.

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The Tyranny of Empty

There’s a hole in the heart. And it’s not a small tear, it’s an opening that gets bigger and bigger the more we try to fill it with accumulations, accomplishments, and accolades. It starts with legitimate needs that at first can form a framework for becoming an adult; things like discovering our gifts, getting an education, finding a place to live, obtaining transportation, cultivating friendships, looking for a life partner. But, as Richard Rohr says in his life-changing book, Falling Upward, if we don’t begin to fill that container with something eternal, we begin to fill it with things that are not.

Sooner or later we begin to discover that void is God-shaped, and if we don’t fill it with God himself, it becomes a gnawing hunger that is omnivorous. It can eventually eat everything we thought would fulfill our needs. And this hunger is universal. It might have an American appetite, but the hunger is universal. It may seek to be or follow American idols, or build castles in American suburbs, or subdue its demands with designer style or a growing internet following, but the hunger is not satisfied, the chasm gets more immense, and the appetite for substitutes becomes more insatiable.

Eventually, the cavity begins to devour the framework. The vocations begin to unravel, the fabric of marriage and family life begins to fray, charm no longer guarantees attention at the table, and bit by bit the anchor will not hold.

What does it take to get our attention? The glorious news is that all along the goodness of God has been pursuing us like the “hound of heaven” who will not “rest or let us rest until we are finally perfect,” as C.S. Lewis so aptly put it. We can spend life running away from God’s love; we can wear out ourselves, filling the void with all kinds of substitutes and addictions, but finally we can turn around and fall exhausted into the arms of the Love that will not let us go.

All the scattered pieces of our lives will finally come together, and the puzzle will begin to fall into place. As a person, as a culture, as a country, the only solution to the gaping emptiness is surrender to the One who has been chasing after us the whole time.

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Lord, My Friend Is Depleted

Lord, my friend is depleted.

The day after day demands of caring for the man she loves
as his health seems to crumble in her hands
is sucking her dry.

Small victories, huge defeats,
encouraging moments,
discouraging days
see-saw over the arched
frame of her optimism.

But gradually the weight added
to both ends of the teeter-totter
has begun to cut deep into her spirit.
Hold her up, Lord.

Help me today to know how I can
ease the load,
maybe give perspective to
what comes to feel like
a win/lose situation.

Lord, some days it looks like a
lose/lose prospect.
But we both know—
and her husband, my dear friend, also knows—
that under it all it’s really a win/win situation.

Lord, death is not the problem.
It’s the daily grinding away of the dying process
that wears our spirits raw.

Let friendship be a healing balm today.
Let us laugh; laughter heals.
Let us cry; tears bathe the wound
Let us have good conversations
about children, politics, travel,
work, writing and speaking—
good conversation about the stuff of life
that diverts our attention.
Let us reminisce; memory
gives perspective on the present.
Let us pray; prayer teaches us
to relinquish control
to the only One who knows
where we’re all going
and how we should get there.

Lord, thank You for my friend.
Heal her spirit today;
let me be the one to nurse her to wellness today.
Come, Healer of Spirits. Make us whole again.

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Longing To Be Free

ONE MORNING on the national news, there was a story about a young African American police officer whose associates at the department met him, as he reported for duty, dressed in the hooded garb of the Ku Klux Klan. Even women on the office staff and other department employees joined to taunt and frighten him. The prank went on a long time before they told him it was a joke and had him pose for pictures with them all in their costumes of discrimination.

On the news, this handsome young father was being interviewed by a reporter about the incident. "How did you react?" the reporter asked. "I was terrified on the inside, but all I could think to do was smile; he answered. "When I got home, I sobbed like a child."

Later the offenders, fearing reprisals and wanting to take back the photos they gave him, threatened the officer.

As I watched this young man trying to process such a deep and ugly violation by those he thought he knew and trusted, by those who served with him day by day under an oath to uphold justice, I felt powerful emotions rise within me. I felt anger at the indignity and at the violation of so many of the codes that hold any decent society together. I felt deep sadness at the breaking of the human spirit and the robbery of the self-respect of a fellow human being. I felt brokenness in my soul as I saw his pain and realized that all of us are capable of hurting each other deeply.

I left my house to go to the village for breakfast. As I sipped hot coffee, I watched a toddler across the room struggle to escape his mother's arms. He wanted to explore the café and then, perhaps, get close enough to slip through the screen door into the morning sunshine.

Every person innately longs to be free. This toddler knew it even in the womb. The time clock kicked in one day and the same little body that had been content to grow in the security of that liquid environment began to make its way—force its way—through the narrow confines of the birth canal to a place where it could be free.

The passion to be free is built into the very fiber of creation: the seedling pushing against and bursting from the protective casing that carried it to its resting place; the gazelle racing from a predator; the squirrel, high above the ground, leaping to a distant limb to escape the competition.

Since the fall of mankind, people have used others to achieve their objectives. From the building of the kingdoms of Egypt and Rome to the present conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the strong have taken advantage of the weak. But the dream of freedom cannot be snuffed out by force or manipulation. Sooner or later, people will have their freedom— sometimes at any cost.

Down through history, dictators and philosophies have attempted to enslave the human spirit. Blood has flowed like rivers in the fight to regain human dignity. The Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation have taken their places with other great instruments of liberation to testify to the human passion for freedom. The official seals of governments were burned onto these documents that have deeply affected our own way of life.

But never has a document of freedom had the power to alter the course of history and change human lives like the declaration bearing the blood-stained brand of the Cross. And this seal is burned not on a piece of paper but on the very souls of all who were enslaved by sin. The document is a simple invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28).

Prison bars, heavy chains, dungeons, concentration camps, and shackles: none of these can hold a candle to the bondage of the human soul devised by the father of lies. But no release, no emancipation, no pardon can bring freedom like that bought at Calvary. That is freedom indeed!

Let freedom ring!

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Art - The Language of the Soul

There are some things we cannot communicate to others or articulate for ourselves by using statements, spread sheets, or ledgers.  Words hammered into manuals, mission statements, and creeds fall far short.  There are thoughts so much higher than our thoughts that they must come to us in inklings (they are all our finite minds can hold at one time), and even these droplets from the ocean of truth must come by revelation.

God used art.  He used it way before He carved simple rules on tablets of stone on Mt. Sinai-–these were only emergency rescue measures, concessions to the destructive dictates of our small perceptions and fallen inclinations.

But in the beginning was a love song breathed into the formless void so moving that the building blocks of all things filled the void, and from these vibrating sound waves all things began to “live and move and have their being”.  He flung heat and warmth, color and light on the canvas of utter darkness, and, as James Weldon Johnson tried to put into words, He “spangled the night with a thousand stars”.  But, oh, it was much more than that.

With humor, with delicate detail, with intricate precision, He created, not just for the moment but for limitless generations of life to come with built-in safeguards and adaptive potential we are even now only beginning to recognize and appreciate. Yet all of creation was but a postcard, inviting us to something beyond.  We can only imagine.

There has to be a song.  There has to be inspiration.  There has to be revelation for which we then need metaphors and pictures, drama and music and dance, to hint at what we have perceived. 

Some things are eternal not temporal, transcendent not immediate.  Some truths are so immense that they escape even the most sophisticated of measuring sticks and weighing scales the human mind has developed. 

Glimpses of these truths overpower our systems.

And so we sing.  We tell stories and write poetry.  We employ the language of symbol.  We dance.  We dramatize for each other the insights too big for our formulas or explanations.  And we believe.  Yes, we believe.

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