What We Did This Week

When it is the end of January and you cannot remember the last time you saw the sun, you will hang up a strand of white Christmas lights on your kitchen drapes to cheer up the space you spend most of your day. You will only venture outside to collect the mail from the box inches from your front door. You will pile your recycling in bags outside your side door hoping your husband will be kind enough to put them in their appropriate bins, unconcerned about what the neighbors might think. You will stop wearing make-up, not even bothering with a touch of eye liner or mascara, because you never leave the house. You will not despair at the bleakness of the days but maintain hope in the resurrection which is to come. You will liken your confinement within the walls of your home to that of a monk in his cell and find comfort that everything you need to know can be learned within this space. You will marvel at feathery snowflakes falling outside your window, whose beauty has not been lost despite their familiarity. You will giggle at your sons' insistence to play priest and make the holy bread out of blue and red homemade play-dough. You will tie their blankets around their necks and touch their "vestments" and kiss their pretend crosses when requested. You will take delight in your eldest son's creation of a button necklace for his treasured bear, Baby Owen, and will praise his ingenuity for days. You will begin to teach your 16-month-year old daughter some of the faces her brothers learned when they were tinies. She will master "Surprise" and "Pensive" and you will comment on her keen mind. You will make puppets out of paper bags because you promised to do it the day before and didn't; you will muster up the energy so as not disappoint again despite the fact that you are dead tired and the coffee bag is empty. You will be surprised that despite the buttons, scraps of felt and fabric, sprawled out on the table and floor, that you actually enjoyed this particular craft. You will lay aside all the not so good things done and said throughout the week, which required a large amount of forgiveness from your children and spouse, and be grateful for mercy and the grace and courage to pick yourself off the floor and try again.

 

14 Cows For America

The Johnson children received many fabulous books for Christmas this year. Though I warned grandparents and aunts and uncles the books would not evoke an enormous amount of hoopla from the boys, like say an awesome LEGO set, I guaranteed them that in the end, these would be the gifts most remembered. Hopefully I will motivate myself and share some of these stories with you, but for now, while it is fresh in my mind (Thomas and I read it today for school), I would like to introduce you to the amazing, true story of how the Maasai tribe of Kenya responded to the events of September 11, 2001.

14 Cows For America

Carmen Agra Deedy

Illustrated By Thomas Gonzalez

In Collaboration With Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah

 

"It is June of 2002, and a very unusual ceremony begins in a far-flung village in western Kenya.

An American diplomat is surrounded by hundreds of Maasai people. A gift is about to be bestowed on the men, women, and children of America, and he is there to accept it. The gift is as unsought and unexpected as it is extraordinary.

A mere nine month have passed since the September 11 attacks, and hearts are raw. Tears flow freely from American and Maasai alike as these legendary warriors offer their gift to a grieving people half a world away.

Word of the gift will travel news wires around the globe. Many will be profoundly touched, but for Americans, this selfless gesture will have deeper meaning still. For a heartsick nation, the gift of fourteen cows emerges from the choking dust and darkness as a soft light of hope...and friendship."

-From the jacket cover of 14 Cows For America

www.14cowsforamerica.com

I Saw What I Saw

When confronted with a moment that should be tear-filled, I tend to clam up, step back, and though fully present and experiencing a depth of emotion, display a face of stone. You can call it what you will, a means of protection, a way to survive, God's grace, but it is how I am built. 

It has been seven months since Jared, Thomas, and I stepped off an Ethiopian Air airplane and back onto American soil at Washington D.C.'s Dulles Airport with our nine-month baby girl, Lucia Ethiopia Kebedech, and not a day goes by that I do not think of her birthmother. Unlike my sons' adoptions, in which we only were able to meet their foster mothers (a truly wonderful gift), Jared and I, together with the other couples in our travel group, journeyed six hours south of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to meet members of our children's birth families.

"How was it?" I am quizzed when people learn of this encounter. Typically I unravel the logistics of our brief meeting - the anticipation while sitting in a crowded room waiting for our family to be called, knowing that Lucia's birthmother was so close, the glaring lights thrust upon us as we were videotaped, how much my daughter, our daughter, resembles the woman who carried her for nine months and gave her life, the fumbling questions, and how surreal it all was. And yet while I have teared up on occasion when speaking of and thinking of her, I have remained on pretty steady emotional ground. Until last night. 

Our dear friends Wade and Julie, just one of the beautiful couples with whom we shared our journey, created a video chronicling their trip to bring their daughter home from Ethiopia. Esther Selam's birthday is within weeks of Lucia's; the two lived together in Durame; and Selam and Ethiopia probably were together for that six-hour drive with their nannies to the care center in Addis where we finally met them. This couple from Tennessee and us from Iowa received our daughters' referrals on the same day; we passed court in Ethiopia on the same day; we flew together from D.C. to Addis and then back again. While this is uniquely their story, in many ways it is ours also. Because what they saw, we saw; what they experienced, we experienced; and because of it, we are forever bonded with them and all those members of our group.

And so I ask you to indulge me today because I know you love me and our family, or at the very least, you like us, and accept the lyrics of Sara Groves as my offering for this week's Poetry Wednesday. Right now, this is where my heart is and anything else given would be false. And I invite you to take thirteen minutes of your time and journey with Julie and Wade (and Jared and me) to Ethiopia.   

 

I Saw What I Saw

Sara Groves

I saw what I saw and I can't forget it

I heard what I heard and I can't go back

I know what I know and I can't deny it

Something on the road

Cut me to the soul

Your pain has changed me

Your dream inspires

 Your face a memory

Your hope a fire

Your courage asks me what I'm afraid of

And what I know of love

We've done what we've done and we can't erase it

We are what we are and it's more than enough

We have what we have but it's no substitution

Something on the road

Cut me to the soul

Your pain has changed me

Your dream inspires

Your face a memory

 Your hope a fire

Your courage asks me what I'm afraid of

And what I know of love

I say what I say with no hesitation

I have what I have and I'm giving it up

I do what I do with deep conviction

Something on the road

Cut me to the soul

Your pain has changed me

Your dream inspire

 Your face a memory

Your hope  a fire 

Your courage asks me what I am afraid of

And what I know of God.

Poetry Wednesday

Many Years Ann Maddex

A week later I am brought to tears at the utter beauty and innocence of those children surrounding me. How my tender-hearted godson, Benjamin, extended his arm across the pew behind him and grasped my hand; how my goddaughter, Isabelle, and her cousin Priscilla, smiled, enchanted by that figure, so sweet and still so new with life, as she was prepared for her descent into the baptismal font. I cry out of respect, deeply awed and humbled by Annie's mother, my precious friend Paige, whose multitude of trials, which could shake the faith right out of anyone, has left her more beautiful, filled with peace, joy, and love, so obviously reflected within her on this day. To you Ann Parker Maddex, four months old, this is my prayer, my hope for you: That you may grow in grace and truth; that you may love sincerely, hating what is evil and clinging to the good; that you may you act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with our God. And may God grant you many, many years.

 

And if you would like to see some lovely pictures from this day, check out Molly's post.

At A Country Funeral

My paternal grandfather, George Swanson, died when I was four-years-old. Consequently,  my memories of him are severely limited. When I focus on the fog of what I can recollect about my early childhood, I remember a man sitting on a couch in his home, a green, plastic visor fitted around his head covering the eyes which disease and age had left nearly visionless. I remember an indistinguishable figure, an elderly man in a wheelchair being transported to a nursing home by his youngest son, my father, and myself. I remember a feeling of regret and being ill at ease, even at that tender age, that we were seemingly abandoning him to the care of others. And I remember that soon after his residency at the home, he died.

I do not remember his voice, how tall he was, the color of his eyes, or any of his features. In my attempts to flesh out this man who was my grandfather, I have been forced to rely on information passed down to me his legacy. My grandfather's name was George Edward but because there lived in the same small town another gentleman with the same name, Grandpa went by George X lest there be any confusion. He was a farmer who sold whatever he could to support his family, and like most families in his village of Woodhull, Illinois, the George and Anna Swanson family was poor. Grandpa raised raspberry bushes (which I remember), wove rugs out of colored plastic bread wrappers, and created small baskets from old, cut-up Christmas cards that he strung together and gave as gifts–a treasure which I possess.

Throughout the years I have stolen pictures of my Grandpa from vintage photo albums stashed in my father's closets; albums whose black pages inevitably rip despite my painstaking endeavors to leave the books intact. The photographs which most fascinate me or the ones from George Swanson's youth–his confirmation picture from 1908 which hangs on our bedroom wall, his cowboy shot striking a daring pose while costumed in chaps, hat, and gun, and the photo above with his friends George Ericson, Lawrence Swanson and Oscar Swanson that my Grandma Anna noted on the back was "a nice picture" and really it is.  George Edward Swanson lies in a grave in the village in which he lived. Our family remembers our departed and pays homage to them even though my memories of this man are dim. "What we owe the future" to quote from this Berry poem, "is the past, the long knowledge that is the potency of time to come."

At A Country Funeral

Wendell Berry

Now the old ways that have brought us   

farther than we remember sink out of sight   

as under the treading of many strangers   

ignorant of landmarks. Only once in a while   

they are cast clear again upon the mind   

as at a country funeral where, amid the soft

lights and hothouse flowers, the expensive   

solemnity of experts, notes of a polite musician,   

persist the usages of old neighborhood.

Friends and kinsmen come and stand and speak,   

knowing the extremity they have come to,   

one of their own bearing to the earth the last   

of his light, his darkness the sun’s definitive mark.

They stand and think as they stood and thought   

when even the gods were different.

And the organ music, though decorous   

as for somebody else’s grief, has its source

in the outcry of pain and hope in log churches,   

and on naked hillsides by the open grave,   

eastward in mountain passes, in tidelands,   

and across the sea. How long a time?   

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide my   

self in Thee. They came, once in time,

in simple loyalty to their dead, and returned   

to the world. The fields and the work   

remained to be returned to. Now the entrance

of one of the old ones into the Rock

too often means a lifework perished from the land   

without inheritor, and the field goes wild   

and the house sits and stares. Or it passes   

at cash value into the hands of strangers.   

Now the old dead wait in the open coffin   

for the blood kin to gather, come home

for one last time, to hear old men

whose tongues bear an essential topography   

speak memories doomed to die.

But our memory of ourselves, hard earned,   

is one of the land’s seeds, as a seed

is the memory of the life of its kind in its place,   

to pass on into life the knowledge

of what has died. What we owe the future   

is not a new start, for we can only begin   

with what has happened. We owe the future   

the past, the long knowledge

that is the potency of time to come.

That makes of a man’s grave a rich furrow.

The community of knowing in common is the seed   

of our life in this place. There is not only   

no better possibility, there is no

other, except for chaos and darkness,   

the terrible ground of the only possible

new start. And so as the old die and the young   

depart, where shall a man go who keeps   

the memories of the dead, except home   

again, as one would go back after a burial,   

faithful to the fields, lest the dead die   

a second and more final death.

Poetry Wednesday

How Quickly the Time Has Gone

Thomas' baptism with godparents Troy and Molly and Fr. John Baker in May of 2005

Pascha Day 2006 with Fr. John Baker at Christ the Savior, our parish in Chicago. This was our last Easter in Chicago.

Two weeks ago Thomas served Vespers and Liturgy for the first time at our tiny Davenport Orthodox mission. He did a great job and our visiting priest, Fr. James Mackoul, was very kind and patient. Plus Daddy was close by to help. I think Jared and I were both a bit teary and of course very proud.

Remembering A Great Man

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." Martin Luther King Jr.

A blessed MLK Day to you all.

In Silence

In Silence

Thomas Merton

Be still.

Listen to the stones of the wall.

Be silent, they try

to speak your

name.

Listen

to the living walls.

Who are you?

Who

are you? Whose

silence are you?

Who (be quiet)

are you (as these stones

are quiet). Do not

think of what you are

still less of

what you may one day be.

Rather

be what you are (but who?)

be the unthinkable one

you do not know.

O be still, while

you are still alive,

and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)

to your own being,

speaking by the unknown

that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them

to be my own silence:

and this is difficult. The whole

world is secretly on fire. The stones

burn, even the stones they burn me.

How can a man be still or

listen to all things burning?

How can he dare to sit with them

when all their silence is on fire?”

Poetry Wednesday

What Thomas drew today

 

 A Portrait of His Father

(and Mother-that is my arm flipping blueberry pancakes in the background)

And thank you for all your prayers for my father. His surgery on Friday went well and he was discharged from the University Hospital in Iowa City this afternoon to a local rehabilitation facility.

Birth or Death?

The Blessing of the Waters

Originating in Egypt during the third century, the Feast of Theophany/Epiphany is celebrated on January 6th and is a more ancient feast than Christmas Day. In an apparent effort to combat a pagan holiday to the Egyptian sun god during the winter solstice, Christians began to celebrate a feast commemorating the epiphaneia of the true Savior. Initially everything prior to Christ's public ministry - His birth, the visit of the Magi, His baptism in the River Jordan, the first miracle at Cana - were all celebrated in this one feast. While most in the west have come to emphasize the arrival of the kings from the east on this day, the Orthodox world commemorates the baptism of Christ by St. John the Baptist.

The Journey of the Magi

T.S. Eliot 

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, 
     refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the 
     terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and 
     grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
     liquor and women, 
And the night-fires going out, and the 
     lack of shelters, 
And the cities hostile and the towns 
     unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
     prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all 
     night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, 
     saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a 
     temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of 
     vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
     beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in 
     away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with 
     vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for 
     pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so
     we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
     too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
     satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I 
     remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This:  were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, 
     certainly, 
We had evidence and no doubt.  I had 
     seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; 
     this Birth was 
Hard and bitter agony for us, like 
     Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
     Kingdoms, 
But no longer at ease here, in the old 
     dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their 
     gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Poetry Wednesday