I’ve come to think of it as “9-11 weather,” those brilliant blue clear sunny days we get in early September that remind me of kids going back to school, the parks filling up with soccer games, apples showing up in the farmers’ markets…and that terrible disaster that still remains for me an ache on the New York skyline. I look downtown and see a hole where two giant buildings loomed.
We bound back from tragedy. We humans are ever resourceful. That’s how God made us. New York has certainly bounced back and moved on to other challenges, the current one being a dreary economy. But these days of 9-11 weather serve as reminders of the losses that were suffered. As we move on, we pause and reflect. God made us like that too.
I pray for the families whose homes will forever feel empty like that bit of New York sky. I pray for the survivors who still feel terror in their heart at a sudden loud sound or the smell of smoke or the nightmares that wake them in the night. And I pray for those who call themselves our enemies because Jesus especially urged us to pray for our enemies. Would that we could all understand each other so such tragedies will never happen on any continent.
That’s what 9-11 weather does. It makes me want to pray. The peace the world aches for can start with a beautiful blue clear sunny September day.
I was just out in California where the fires were burning. The heat was intense, 104 degrees one day in Pasadena, and with the fires blazing in the foothills, the smoke could sting your eyes and the smell was everywhere, indoors and out. At night we looked to the hills and it was as though there were a volcano on the ridge, huge flames leaping into the dark sky, the red glare lighting up the clouds of smoke.
It would be easy to compare such a natural disaster with hell. Over 200 square miles have been destroyed, tens of homes lost, thousands evacuated, 2500 firemen battling the firestorm like a small army, building new fire breaks to contain the blaze. Two firefighters have been lost so far. I can’t imagine a harder job. The heat was intense enough without the fire. On Sunday at church there was a special round of prayers for the firefighters. They do heroic work.
What I have to remind myself when I see such devastation is that wild fires are a natural part of life in Southern California. It’s part of the ecology. This fire is particularly fierce because much of the area hasn’t burned in 60 to 80 years, and the old brush is like tinder. But the hills will turn green again with the winter rains – God willing, there won’t be floods. Some seeds even need the fire to germinate.
There is loss, but there will be new life. That’s also part of God’s ecology. I pray for the safety of the firefighters. I pray for those whose homes are threatened and all who have suffered loss. Meanwhile I hold on to the hope of the cooling breezes and the greening of the hills that will come. It always comes.
Here’s a prayer of thanks for a quick-thinking waitress.
I’m a bit of slob when it comes to eating. My wife continually has to remind me to use a napkin. (Napkin? What’s that?) Sometimes in her frustration she’ll simply reach across the table and wipe something off my cheek or chin. And that spot of grease that splashes on my shirt or gets on my tie? I’m the last to see it.
So I was very grateful the other day for a waitress who leapt into action and saved my life, or at least my shirt. I was having lunch with a friend and as I was working my way through my salad, the waitress suddenly plopped down a glass of water by my napkin. I looked up at her. “What’s this?”
“Soda water,” she said. “For that spot on your shirt.”
Sure enough, there was a splash of dressing on my shirt and now I had the perfect means of cleaning it. “Thanks so much,” I said, dipping my napkin in the soda water and moping up the mess I’d made. “Do you know my wife?” She didn’t but they were cut from the same cloth.
So here’s for those small actions that come along in a day and take you by surprise for their kindness. When you look at the shirt you can’t even tell what turmoil transpired. PS: Thanks too for all your kind comments. What a great community this is!
What’s the best noise of summer? Is it the cicadas tuning up their instruments for an al fresco concert or the crack of the bat from the kids playing ball in the park? I’d make a vote for the sound of a cooling thunderstorm on a summer night when the rain pours down off the eaves and splatters on your windowsills. And there’s surely something about the sweet splash when you dive into a pool on a hot summer’s day.
But I’d add one more special noise to that roster. I heard it last night. Carol went to the green market twice this week and our larder’s brimming over with the fresh produce: peaches, juicy strawberries, green and red basil, fluffy red-headed lettuce, huge beets that were sweeter than ice cream, tomatoes, wax beans worthy of a still life painting, and best of all, corn on the cob.
We had the corn slathered in butter last night and as I picked up my cob, took a bite, the butter dripping down my fingers, I heard that wonderful popping noise of the corn in my mouth. It says all that I love about summer, the green bounty, the fresh produce that makes every meal a picnic, the surfeit of color and warmth and light. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands, said the Psalmist. Would it be too much to say you can do that with a bite of corn on the cob? And when you’re at it, add the sound of everybody at the table, going “umm-mmmmm.”
It was not the place I expected to find a prayer. I didn’t even notice it when I came into the place, a hotel room on the third floor after a long day of traveling with a delayed flight and bad food and a restaurant downstairs that was going to close in fifteen minutes. I dropped my bags and laptop and took the elevator back down for one of the worst meals I’ve ever eaten.
I guess you could say I was grouchy by the time I returned to the room. I plugged in the laptop, took out the cell phone, checked for messages, called my wife then brushed my teeth, ready for bed. At least the bed was comfortable.
I was about to pick up a paperback thriller, hoping the pages would distract me when I noticed the card on the bedside table. We hope that God will grant you peace and rest while you are under our roof, it said. May the business that brought you our way prosper. May every call you make and every message you receive add to your joy. When you leave, may your journey be safe.
I thought about the words for a long time, especially the line that said, We are all travelers. From birth till death, we travel from eternity to eternity. Here I was, a thousand miles from home, disgruntled about the trip, but reminded that my life’s journey was full of such byways. It was up to me to make them all count. I said a prayer of my own and turned out the light. I had a very good night’s sleep.
Nothing’s tougher than having a kid in the hospital. I remember when our younger son Tim was four and he broke his femur and was in the hospital with his leg in traction for 26 days. We did our best back then to keep him entertained and distracted, but many was the time I wished we’d had more outside help.
If it happened now I would have gotten the perfect thing from Guideposts. A Comfort Kit and they’re meant for kids in the hospital. The kits have stickers and crayons and coloring books and stars, including a big plush star you can hug. Last week I was with a group from Guideposts at the Ronald McDonald House in St. Petersburg, Florida, where we had a party for the parents and siblings of kids in the children’s hospital down there.
That’s me in the picture up above, reading to some of the kids. What a great bunch they were. After getting their faces painted and getting balloons they tolerated a bit of storytelling from me. At every page they had some good suggestions about the book I was reading (a bunch of potential editors). My big hope was that I was giving their parents a well-earned break. Because when your kid is in the hospital, you’re in need of some distraction and entertainment yourself.
I hope I can show you more photos of the party down in St. Pete, but for now a big prayer for all you parents and grandparents who have sick kids. Comfort can come in the most unexpected places. Even from a guy reading to kids beneath a big picture of Ronald McDonald. The kids were being patient because their Comfort Kits were coming later.
There’s something that happens to me about once a month that always shakes me out of my spiritual torpor and makes realize I’m meant to be doing a little better in “Love your neighbor as yourself” department.
It’ll all start out innocently enough. I will have asked someone to do me a favor, maybe not even that big a favor, but big enough that it’s going to have cost them some time and energy. I won’t hear from the person for days or weeks and I’ll start fretting, wishing they could just do what I asked. How hard would it be? Don’t I deserve it?
Then just in the middle of my irritation, I’ll get a phone call or an email from someone asking me to do a big favor. The timing is never ideal, the request seems presumptuous if not outlandish. I’ll feel burdened and put upon and start thinking about all the ways I can say no. I delay, I procrastinate, I avoid the request that’s sitting in the inbox. Then it dawns on me: “Someone is asking me to do the kind of nice thing that I’m expecting for myself.”
This might seem small in the area of spiritual growth, but I think it’s HUGE. It must be something that makes the angels weep. If we want the heaven and earth from God, shouldn’t we be willing to offer a small piece of it to X or Y?
So here’s my suggestion – I’m making a mental note to myself. When you’re feeling a little blocked in your spiritual life, when you’re stymied, look at those good things that you can do for others. No good deed goes unpunished? I’m waiting for the moment when I can tally up more giving from me than I’ve ever been given.
I’m not much of a Franophile and I don’t speak French well enough to call myself a Francophone, but I do believe in celebrating Bastille Day or at least I celebrate it in a certain way every year.
It all happened more than a couple of years back when my old college roommate David and I were looking for a time to get together for lunch. We finally found a moment: July 14, it turned out. The date didn’t register with either of us but we happened to meet at a little French restaurant – long since gone – with kindly, bossy Breton waitresses and while we were looking over the menu for a summery salade nicoise or celeri remoulade they announced excitedly that they had a blue, white and red tart just for the day.
That’s when it dawned on both of us: Happy Bastille Day! David and I caught up on a lot of news as we happily ate our way through steak frites and duly ordered the patriotic tart with blueberries and raspberries and white cream. We’ll have to do this again next year, we said. And we have. We both get pretty busy and it’s a way to keep in touch, to keep friendship on the menu, and it reminds me of the value of having holidays in the first place, especially religious ones. Of course it’s good to be thankful everyday, but isn’t it good that we have one day to single out that virtue, the way we celebrate moms on Mother’s Day and dads on Father’s Day and love on Valentine’s Day?
And so in my idiosyncratic, non-French way, I’d like to propose a day to celebrate friendship. Pick any day on your calendar and pick out that good friend you haven’t seen in a while and be thankful for all that they’ve brought in your life. David and I will do that at lunch. Happy Bastille Day!
Last night we ate dinner outside for the first time this summer. As we watched the sun sink towards the palisades across the river, the brightest tint of gold touching the bottoms of the clouds, Timothy said, “I think I saw some cartoon where everybody claps for a sunset.”
“Sort of like clapping for fireworks,” I said.
“But sunsets happen everyday,” Tim said.
We ate our fresh green bean salad and Carol’s risotto, staring at the sky. It was a subtler work of art than the Fourth of July fireworks but no less magnificent. Actually more so because it spread across the whole sky and everywhere we looked the colors kept changing. The fiery globe disappeared from view and like a star who has introduced a tune, the clouds took up the song and riffed on it in their own sky-hogging way. They went from bronze to copper to an impossible purple. By the time you noticed something in one corner there’d be something equally enchanting in another.
“Is this when we clap?” I wondered. It wasn’t like the fireworks. You knew when they were over.
"I guess so,” Timothy said and the three of us gave a quiet round of applause that didn’t sound like much in the patio beside the willow tree.
But even then when the clouds turned gray and the color drained from the sky, the water in the river was a brilliant deep blue and the trees were silhouettes. What a beautiful night.
“I don’t think it matters when you clap,” I decided. God’s creation was a long-running show with thousands of new acts to applaud. Thankfulness would work any hour of the day. Still God must like it when we notice his especially florid numbers.
I’m going to be singing some Stephen Foster. Maybe that’s not such a typical July Fourth activity. Lots of other composers come to mind for a Fourth of July picnic, starting with Sousa and going on to Springsteen. But this picnic is a memorial for the mother of my friend Fred.
What a wonderful woman she was. Warm, smart, funny, kind and thoughtful, she single-handedly raised her son, an only child, and he is one of the most outrageously generous people I know. She died at the age of 89, spending the last few years at an assisted-living home, but she often visited Fred’s property up on the Hudson and her ashes are going to be sprinkled there beneath her favorite tree, a towering pine.
She was aphasic those last few years because of a stroke but she managed to communicate quite well in her jumbled vocabulary, including this wish to become part of the land that her son has nurtured and loved. I remember visiting her at the assisted living home and on one visit, when speech became a struggle, we sat together and sang, old sweet memorable tunes that the stroke never erased.
That’s why I’ll sing one of them at the pine tree, her favorite song, “Beautiful Dreamer” by Stephen Foster. Like the best of souls, she was a beautiful dreamer and when I look at her son and all the kindnesses he has done and the vision he’s spread for a greener world, I think of how dreams grow when they’re passed down through the generations. She was always so proud of him, but I give her a lot of the credit. The dreams and the love had to come from somewhere.
