Speak to Me Sunday: The Man in the Fog

One morning, in the mountains of North Carolina, Joe and I went hiking. It had rained the night before, so our footsteps made no sound as we walked along a trail carpeted with sodden leaves. The air was cool, but still damp, and a thick fog, or mist, swirled around us. We could not see the path ahead.

The hike was energizing, but my mind, heart, and spirit were tired. We had just come through a pandemic that brought the world to its knees, and travel restrictions, mask controversy, and contentious politics only added to the bickering, squabbling, finger pointing, and protesting, all of it done with the righteous indignation of people serving as both judge and jury against everyone except the person looking back in the mirror. The ensuing consequence pitted brother against brother, friend against friend, city against state, and people against government.

I was tired of all of it. Although the hike was quiet, I knew once we descended the mountain I would be in the real world again. And so I turned inward and began to pray. About nothing. About everything. I was not even sure what I was praying about. My prayer was not neat, or eloquent, but just words exhaled with every step as we silently climbed up and up.

Suddenly, like the parting of a curtain, a man emerged from the fog in front of us. He was alone, carrying a backpack and a trekking pole. We exchanged pleasantries—how are you, good weather for hiking—and then asked if he could give us a book. I hesitated for a fraction of a second and then said, “Sure. Are you an author?”

He was, in fact, an author. As he opened his backpack and pulled out a book, he explained he was also a retired pastor who currently trains and mentors pastoral leaders. I thanked him as he handed me the book, and he said goodbye. When I turned around to see where he had gone, the fog had already swallowed him up.

I looked down at the book. The cover featured a watercolor drawing of a hiker, carrying a backpack and trekking pole, and at the top was the title, Finding Your Place in the Father’s Heart.

The title alone spoke to me, and just like that I realized I had been going about this all wrong. In trying to sift through the turmoil, in my feeble attempts to make sense of a nonsensical world, I had turned inward with whispered prayers and questions, my introspection swirling fog-like until, like the mountain pathway I was hiking, I could not see the way.

But it was not my heart I needed to turn to, but my Father’s, not so much to find answers, but to find myself.

Turning my introspection outward, I appreciated how the fog, while preventing us from seeing the road ahead, did not impede our hike; that the pathway revealed itself with every step I took.

And there, on top of a mountain in North Carolina, on a remote hiking trail engulfed in fog, I recognized this as the dramatic moment that it was. Sometimes parables and beatitudes and morals are adequate to teach and console and show us the way, but sometimes they offer ambiguity and require interpretation when we are simply yearning for clarity. 

Sometimes we need a little drama—a thunderbolt, choirs of angels, the temple curtain torn in two.

Or a man emerging from the fog on top of a mountain in North Carolina.

The Convergence

Today, a tennis tournament, a bachelor weekend in Hilton Head, and a cruise converged in the most spectacular and unexpected way.

And where did they converge?

It happened very cleverly ...

1- My sister, whose team is playing in a regional tennis tournament, stopped in Augusta before continuing her journey to Auburn. 

2- Jonathan, who is headed to his bachelor weekend in Hilton Head, stopped in Augusta to pick up Timothy before meeting ten other guys (including Nicholas) in a 2-bedroom beach condo. (Do NOT ask me where everyone will sleep. Sometimes a mom knows when NOT to get involved). 

3- Since all of them were going to be here, I invited my parents over as well so they can tell us about their cruise (they got back late last night) and say hello Laura, Jonathan, and Timothy.

Please note how everyone managed to get here right at noon. Lunchtime. 

Smart, they are. 

So I diced fruit, assembled Muffalettas, and put out a broccoli salad. I served cold drinks, and frothy coffee, and my parents shared chocolate from Mackinac Island. We laughed, talked, and exchanged news.

Then, POOF! They all left.

Convergence over.

And I cleaned up the kitchen.

Giant Steps

Mother, may I?

In the childhood game Mother, May I?, a child must ask permission to move forward by using the all-important question: Mother May I—take two giant steps? five baby steps? one baby step then three giant steps? Sometimes, the “mother” answers yes, and sometimes no. If the child forgets to ask the question the correct way, he/she has to go back to the beginning and start all over again.

I was thinking about the game this past Sunday when the two older boys called home to chat. As adults now living on their own, the Mother, May I? of their childhood has turned into Mother, I may. Then fill in the blank: may go to Japan this summer, get engaged, move to a new apartment, buy a new car. The flip-flopped words now inform, rather than ask.

And there are no more baby steps.

Just big GIANT steps that mark new beginnings and exciting milestones.

Jonathan and Caroline’s November wedding date is quickly approaching, especially now that pre-wedding festivities have commenced: Caroline’s bachelorette party last month, a couple’s engagement party last weekend, and Jonathan’s bachelor weekend just one week away.

Nicholas and Lauren, just yesterday, moved into their new house in Little Rock. After newlywed apartment living, they are experiencing the unbridled joy of having all that space (Yard! Laundry room! Office!) and settling down to the task of turning a house into a home.

And Timothy’s giant steps come with a long stride. Being the youngest with two older brothers, he is not only following in their footsteps but paving his own way. Just think: he is about to attend his SECOND bachelor weekend and he is only a rising college sophomore. When he attended Nicholas’ bachelor weekend two years ago, he sent a text saying he was sitting on the beach getting Life Lessons from one of Nicholas’ friends. And knowing that friend, who is charming but somewhat of a mess, I mentally cringed.

Giant steps can sometimes be … yikes.

But I know that no matter how many giant steps they take, no matter how far and wide they may wander, it is as it should be.

Mother May I?

Yes, you may. 

Jonathan & Caroline

Nicholas & Lauren

Timothy

Under the Shade of an Olive Tree

In Italian there is a beautiful word, meriggiare, which means to escape the heat of the midday sun by resting in the shade.

I love the word because it sounds like marinate, which conjures up images of languidly reposing, too relaxed, satiated, sun-warmed to do anything other than to be cocooned within your thoughts. Slow thoughts, that float and hover, within reach, but just barely. 

And then you come back to yourself, changed. 

This week our book club met to discuss Frances Mayes' book, Women in Sunlight. This is the third book I have read by Mayes and, like the others, it was as so achingly beautiful that it left me wanting, like having the need to take a big gulp of water but forced, instead, to sip through a straw. By the end of the book, I was a little sad, more than a little melancholy, but also infused with a deep joy and a reminder to embrace the basics: family, friends, food, and faith, blended with tradition, swaddled in the seasons, and served with a glass of vino rosso. 

And during our Book Club meeting, gathered around a table littered with wine glasses and dessert cups of homemade gelato and sorbetto al limone, all of us friends discussing a book about friendship, I realized that meriggiare also describes what it is like to read Women in Sunlight: the feeling when language, poetry, food, and the Italian countryside offer respite and wonder, all while sitting under the shade of an olive tree. 

Beach Music

 

The beach umbrella provided a perfect circle of shade, the waves rolled onto the shore, and the laughter and chatter of children carried on the ocean breeze.

I looked around at the amazing display of the human form around me, at the tanned, ghostly white, freckled, skinny, and fat; there were muscled bodies, flabby ones, and many in-between ones; I saw wrinkles, sagging bellies, frizzy hair, and bald heads; some people wore modest, sensible bathing suits, while others wore hardly anything at all.

The point is, everyone was more than their body!

A man with with a massive beer belly was comforting a crying toddler who had been knocked over by a wave; a pregnant woman sat under an umbrella wearing a sunflower hat, her twin daughters wearing matching hats were digging in the sand; a body builder, heavily muscled and deeply tanned, tip-toed on the hot sand with the gracefulness of a ballet dancer; a grandfather wearing socks and open-toed sandals watched his grandchildren playing a competitive game of bocce; a woman in her eighties pumped her arms as she walked past others half her age.

No one was perfect, but they were all beautiful.

I know I am not unique in saying that self-acceptance is a struggle for many and that it manifests itself in different phases of our lives. In our youth, a lot of that struggle was about wanting to measure up to the actress on the movie screen, the model in the magazine, or the friend who just lost ten pounds. Self-acceptance was all tied up with our yearning for a better future self. Then, as the years went by it was shocking to realize that, despite our best efforts, age catches up to us and now the struggle of self-acceptance originates from a deep-seated longing for time to stand still.

We want to be as we were in the past even as we struggle to hold on to who we are in the present.

Nothing can ever be what it was. The earth turns, the sun rises and sets, the moon waxes and wanes, and the waves advance and recede. Life is too short to worry about tomorrow's sun when you are watching it rise today, or about the encroaching darkness when the moon peeks through the treetops, or about a gone wave when another is just arriving.

Don't wait for the music of tomorrow to dance when there is beach music playing today.

All reaction

Kneeling on Pillows of Gratitude

A few years ago I decided to practice intentional gratitude by keeping a journal. Each evening I wrote down five things for which I was grateful. Sometimes the entries were deep and introspective (a conversation with a stranger that got me thinking), but mostly they were very, very simple (a phone call from one of the boys); sometimes it was a list (fall apples, smiles, good friends), and sometimes I used complete sentences (My article was published! Finished a good book!).

Then life got busy, and while the journaling stopped the gratitude did not, for I had learned an important lesson: once I got into the habit of pausing at the end of the day to think about those grateful moments, to really and truly acknowledge them, I started to recognize them in real time. Gratitude in the moment. 

And gratitude in the moment inspired a verbal acknowledgment of that gratitude. Thank you. Two words that pack a punch, both when given and when received.

I also learned how gratitude paved the way to prayer. Maya Angelou once said that gratitude is the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer, and there have been many nights when one has lead to another.

Of course, there are those days - you know the kind - which may seem as if there is NOTHING good to say. Finding gratitude on those days takes a little work, and to be honest I had some entries that were more sarcastic than grateful (Monday, January 23: Grateful for NyQuil).

But that's okay because gratitude doesn't mean that things are perfect; rather, it's about recognizing the perfect in the imperfect. Being grateful for the sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, so you can rest medicine is no less important than being grateful for my family, or for the full moon, or an early morning walk with Joe.

It's such an easy thing, being grateful, but sometimes it gets buried in the busyness of life, or stays hidden behind inconsequential matters, or dries up with bitterness. But if you look for gratitude, unearth it, dust it off and polish it, then gratitude offers a shining outlook not just on the day, but on life. 

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.

- St. Ambrose

Pedestal

paused

in the park

to ponder

a perfect sea

of colorful petals

praised

the playful

plucky

imperfect

one

*from the files of very bad poetry by bia