The pear trees seem to bloom at the same time my taxes are due.
I just got the call from my accountant – I could never our taxes without his wizardry – and I walked up the street to his office, dreading what the news was. How much would we owe? What kind of estimate would we have to put down for next year? What about Carol’s schedule C? Did we have all the right receipts and pay stubs? I was scowling to myself…and then I noticed the pear tree.
It was beautiful, the white blossoms trembling in the cool April breeze and dropping on the ground like snow. I could think of all the past Aprils when I’d walked this same route to the accountant’s office, pausing at the pear. It was as though God had put the tree right there to stop me in my grumbling tracks, asking me to be a little bit more observant.
Wasn’t I pretty lucky? Hadn’t Carol and I been blessed? I thought of all those pieces of paper I had handed to Larry the accountant. They formed an amazing picture of the year we’d just been through. The doctor and hospital bills and receipts from restaurants and hotels, the thank-you notes from charities and our church acknowledging our gifts. God had been very much been present. Couldn’t I just be a little grateful?
“Right, God, this is not a time to grumble, it’s a time to be thankful.” I bonked the tree trunk with my fist, shaking loose a few more blossoms, breathing in the spring air. Maybe I needed to reconsider April 15. Instead of thinking of it as doomsday, maybe I should think of it as Grateful Day. After all, Jesus had a heart for tax collectors too.
I always approach Holy Week with some dread. In the words of a college friend of mine after her first Palm Sunday service, “It’s so sad.” It is. Death, abandonment, betrayal, suffering. I listen to the whole story of Christ’s last week and feel nothing but sorrow. Where is the triumph? Where is spiritual hope in all this? My mind fixes on how terrible it must have been to be celebrated one day – greeted by throngs waving palms and calling your name – and to be violently crucified less than a week later. If there ever was a better testament to the fickleness of humanity, here it is.
But it’s not a story that we’re meant to hear alone. I almost wish there were a warning stamped on the Holy Week passages in the Bible: “Not recommended for anyone to read all alone.” There’s a reason people go to church on Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and especially on Easter and hear those passages read aloud or sung or acted out. It’s a story to experience together.
Because if there’s some group guilt in the story, there’s also a group joy. At my church we often sing the old spiritual, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” As the song winds its way through the verses, I can add to the refrain that yes, I was there and yes, I did nothing. How could I when Peter – even Peter the stolid, dependable disciple – didn’t stick by Christ at the bitter end?
Then comes Easter and like those things that you worry about at three a.m., the horror is gone with the dawn. In fact, all your worrying was a complete waste of time. You didn’t need to feel that miserable, because the message of Holy Week – the one I cling to as I listen to the incredible story – is one of good news, not bad. What Christ suffered we don’t have to. Sing the endless alleluias at the end. He defeated death, which means a defeat of all those middling fears that pull us down day after day. Hold it in your heart. He is risen indeed.
There are always things you see at a hospital that take you by surprise. I was getting just one more test before surgery – feeling more poked at than a melon in a supermarket – and there I was lying down on a bed in an office. I looked across the room and saw a calendar on the wall, a religious calendar of some sort.
I stared at the picture, a classic painting of a dove descending, rays emanating from its white wings, the light falling on a group of apostles. “That’s a picture of Pentecost,” I thought to myself. “They must have the wrong month. We’re in the middle of Lent. Pentecost comes after Easter.” Wouldn’t a picture for Lent show Christ out in wilderness, tempted by the devil?
“Is the month right for that calendar?” I asked the nurse who was hooking me up to some machine.
“It says March,” she said. “Now close your eyes for a minute…”
I closed my eyes, continuing my argument with the calendar. Then I thought of the dove and how it’s always been a symbol of the Holy Spirit, ever since it appeared above Jesus at his baptism…or maybe earlier than that, when the dove brought Noah an olive branch as a sign that the flood waters were receding. The dove, a perfect sign that God was present.
Maybe it was just the right picture, those warming rays leaping out of that picture and coming to me, ready to remind me where I could find comfort. “Okay, Mr. Hamlin,” the nurse said. I was ready.
The surgery went fine and I’m fine, grateful for great surgeons and good nurses and modern medicine…and someone’s calendar in the corner of an office.
In the middle of the workday, in between emailing a colleague and reading a manuscript online, I picked up the phone. A faint voice said, “I’m Bernadette…”
“I’m Rick Hamlin,” I said, trying to remember if I was working on a story by a Bernadette. “Can I help you?”
"I need someone to pray for me,” she said. “My friend Mary is very very sick from cancer and is in hospice care. I don’t know what to do...” Her voice broke.
I paused. I knew I could transfer her to somebody in the company who handles prayer requests – that’s what OurPrayer is dedicated to – but somehow this woman had gotten my line and was reaching out. No way could I put her on hold.
“We’d be glad to pray for you,” I said and asked more about her friend. Then I paused, hesitating to do something I didn’t really feel qualified for. This was a perfect stranger, after all, and I’m no expert on prayer. Besides, it was the middle of the workday. But I kept thinking there was a reason she’d gotten my number. “Can I pray with you right now?” I finally asked.
“Yes,” she said. I did my best. I hope I helped her. The point is, she helped me…as all of you who’ve commented on my last blog have (I wish I could write each of you individually, but unfortunately, our functionality doesn’t allow that).
The surgery is on Friday and I’m feeling less anxious than I was several days ago. Chalk it up to answered prayer. Thanks for that. I’ll keep you posted. And prayers for Bernadette and Mary.
It looks like I have to go back to the hospital for some surgery next week. Except they don’t call it surgery, they call it a “procedure” (where do they come up with these words?). I would be lying if I didn’t tell you the prospect makes me anxious.
Just today when I went to the hospital for pre-admittance testing, I could feel the old fears resurface. It was more than a year ago that I was wandering the same halls, sitting in the same waiting rooms, getting tested by the same nurses before open-heart surgery. This “procedure” isn’t going to be anything near as serious as that. In fact, they tell me I’ll be able to go home at the end of the day. Sounds good to me.
But why do the fears resurface? Why did a mere sign that said “anesthesia” make me tremble?
I think it’s the fear that in the midst of surgery—or a “procedure”—I’m going to lose God somehow. I’m going to go to some dark place that he can’t reach. I remember during one of the dark days of recovering from the big surgery, tossing in my hospital bed well after midnight and feeling somehow abandoned. “Rick, you’re in a dark place,” I told myself.
Then it occurred to me that there is no dark place that God can’t touch. There is no dark crevice where the human mind can tumble and not be reached by God. He’s seen it all. He’s been there before.
I hope that’s comforting to you. It is to me. If you’re feeling lonely, abandoned, frightened, in a dark place, let me pray with you. We’re not alone. Not at all
You don’t have to be Irish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t have a scrap of Irish blood or at least not that I can tell. I’m sort of the typical mongrel American mix; I had a half-Italian grandfather born on St. Patrick’s Day and he took Patrick for his middle name so maybe there was some Irish there somewhere.
What I’m happy to celebrate on March 17 when everybody in town puts on a little green – and most of them don’t look Irish either – is that lyrical country that gave us great writers and great poets and some music that’ll make you smile or weep. One of the Irish bards who put down the old melodies and fixed his lyrics to them was Thomas Moore (1779-1852). He was born in Dublin but lived most of his life in Britain, France and even the Americas. What could be more Irish than that?
As Irish as I’m not, I love to sing an Irish song and here’s one that was written by Thomas Moore from his immensely popular Irish ballads. “Tis the Last Rose of Summer” is my Irish tenor moment. Sing along!
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It’s been a part of my Mondays ever since I started at Guideposts—back when my hair was brown instead of, well, graying brown, and I didn’t have kids or a mortgage or life insurance.
We sat around the conference table that we still use and read the letters of people asking for us to pray for them, a tradition that goes back to the beginning of Guideposts. I can see how it might have started, people sending in their stories or responding to stories and asking, “By the way, could you pray for me?” Some editor probably thought it would be a nice thing to do for the readers. What they must have found out immediately was that it was wonderful thing for the editors.
The requests come in by email now as well as letters and phone and anyone who has logged on to OurPrayer.org and seen those requests and prayed for them knows what a blessing it is. A blessing to pray for others? That might sound surprising. Yes, sometimes the struggles that other people are going through can be overwhelming. The illnesses, drug addictions, relationship problems, financial stresses, job losses add up into a sorrowful stew.
But there’s always something else at work when we read those requests aloud on Monday mornings. There’s always hope and thankfulness. I can feel it kicking around the table and nudging us before we’ve really started our editorial day and when we close our eyes and pray, I imagine it spreading like an epidemic from this building in midtown Manhattan where our editorial offices lie and traveling across the Hudson and flooding all those places where needs are great, including around our table.
Yes, the news is bad. There are terrible, tough, demeaning, dispiriting things going on in people’s lives, people we love and care about. But there’s always a place to gather, even if it’s online, where the good news can be found.
It’s a great way to start a week—with hope and wonder and prayers.
It’s been over a year since I lost my dear friend Van Varner, former editor-in-chief of Guideposts, and a year since his memorial service. Here’s a story about a promise I made to him…and the song I sang at his memorial. A song can be a way to remember how much you love someone and even when it’s bittersweet, it can be comforting.
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Here’s a song I sing, well, just to feel good. Some of the lyrics are from a psalm and so it’s really a kind of prayer. But then, you know how they say, “When you sing you pray twice,” and what better way to feel joy than to sing a song. What’s the happy song that you sing? Just sing it!
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Every year when Lent rolls around I go ahead and launch into giving up something for 40 days. No, I won’t tell you what I’m going to try to give up because that would be bragging about being humble which seems to go against the whole giving up idea in the first place. Suffice it to say, I’ll try.
I know people who use Lent to give up bad mental habits. One year my wife, Carol, declared that she’d give up worrying for 40 days. (Our friend F. Paul said that would be like Fred Astaire giving up his tap shoes.) I’d be all for getting rid of fear and sloth and self-absorption for six and a half weeks. That would be some accomplishment. But then I’m always trying to tackle those demons.
I actually believe in giving up something material. It’s not about health, although I suppose there might be some health benefits to what I do. It’s about remembering that I am All Too Human and that I don’t really have to be a slave to the cookies at lunch or the chocolate bar in my desk drawer (and I’m not going to tell you what I’m giving up).
This 40 Days of Going Without is a spiritual discipline. It’s a way of saying to God, “I know I’m a physical being with natural wants and desires but you’ve also made me a spiritual being with wants and desires that you are ready to satisfy.” When that urge for the thing I’ve given up for Lent comes – as it surely will – I remind myself of what’s most important in my life. It’s not in the cookie bin or the chocolate drawer.
Of course, I also remember the year Carol gave up chocolate for Lent. She got so desperate, she declares she put on weight from overcompensating!
So have a happy Lent. Sorry if that sounds like a contradiction in terms. This much I can assure you: Give up something you really like for 40 days, you’ll really look forward to Easter!
I hadn't been there in awhile but it looks just the same, huge wooden beams arching over the sanctuary like the hull of a ship. As always with Mom and Dad we went right up to the front pew—Dad has never been shy about worship even if he sings all the hymns on about three notes. Sitting there, I was whisked back. I could remember squirming in that choir loft, passing notes during the sermon. I could recall a prayer I led on Youth Sunday that started out "Hi, God." I could remember late nights in the church basement with the youth group when we sat on pillows in candlelit seriousness and tried to solve the problems of the world.
Because we were in the front row I couldn't crain my neck and look back but I could picture a host of Sunday school teachers and mission trip chaperones and choir parents and Christmas pageant directors. I realized that as much as Mom and Dad raised me, I was raised by this place. When we were kids, full of good ideas and a few wrong-headed notions, there was a community looking out for us, pushing us along, listening to us, praying for us and standing on the sidelines ready to pull us from danger's way. It takes a village to raise a child? It can take a church too.
At the end of the service I finally turned around and a familiar face—albeit older but so am I—greeted me. I could remember her playing the piano at a million gatherings. "It's you," she said, grabbing my hand. "We were praying for you last year," she said, acknowledging a little health crisis I went through.
"Thanks," I said, touched to think she was still at it. That habit we have in churches of supporting each other in good times and bad. The old place was still at it.
What a way to start a week.