Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-26-13

It is a familiar scene this time of year. Children go off to school, some walking up the steps of the yellow school bus, some into the front doors of the school where you drop them off, some into the car, off to college. Familiar scenes; also familiar feelings, at least for parents.

Separation anxiety, of sorts. Landmarks. Turning points. All very emotional. For me, as a father, these scenes were especially emotional, because my children appeared to seldom notice anything special at all about them. Tra la la, they couldn’t wait to board the buses or run for the schoolyard. The most sentiment ever displayed was my son Ted’s annoyance at my insistence to photograph him on the porch, each first day of school year after year (because, um, I KNEW that some day he would cherish the memories) (that day might yet arrive).

It all threatened to get really slobbery when they went off to college. At those points I was ready to grab each of my three kids around their ankles, unwilling to let them go. They reflected no such emotion. I have chalked this all up, by the way, to their active sense of curiosity and adventure, nothing to do with me being the Weirdest Dad On the Street, proven by such episodes.

OK, I exaggerate a little (I tend to exaggerate at least a million times a day). But we need to remember – which means, when I write it, that I often forget – that the “saddest” things in life really are sometimes the sweetest.

When we sign up to be parents, part of the contract is to let go some day. Actually day by day. It is not a mixed blessing, even if we get, in the immortal words of Maynard G. Krebs, misty in those moments. In a recent essay I quoted Theodore Roosevelt, when he said that both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure. Likewise, no less, are dirty diapers, silly tantrums, going off to school, asking for help with homework, the first date, the second broken heart, going off to college or the military, and watching them get married.

“Time and Chance happeneth to all,” we are reminded – and we do need reminders – in Ecclesiastes. If God sees sparrows falling to the ground, He also sees them when they leave the nest… and fly. If Mama Sparrow is not sad about that (which is my guess), neither should we regard our tears as anything but droplets of joy.

Our first born, Heather, I assumed to be exceptional from her first breath, so when she was three months old or so, I festooned the house with large signs labeling everything, just to help her to read a day or two sooner than otherwise. My son Ted entered a more sensible world. Our youngest, Emily, we knew would be our last child. My subliminal response to this, I now realize, was to keep her a baby forever, to preserve her like amber in childhood (hers, not mine). I tried to hide from her the knowledge of things like bicycles and solid food.

I kid again, a little, but rearing children, after all, is more about your values at the time than their “molded” personalities afterward. It is unavoidable, and not to be regretted but rather celebrated. Savor it all, parents, even the separation of day care, summer camp, or college in some state you cannot locate on a map.

Part of God’s sweet plan of life is that when you have children, and nurture them, and train them, and endure (and share) all the dramas of childhood, the hours drag by slowly.

… but when the kids have left home, for whatever the myriad reasons, the years then go by quickly. Remember that, while you still have the gift of remembering.

One of Emily’s friends is Amy Duke Sanchez, whom we would not know except for having “let go” of Emily when she left for a faraway college right about this time of year. Recently AmyDuke forwarded to me a very wise saying – “Don’t ask God for anything until you’ve thanked Him for everything.” That is not merely a template for constructing your prayers.

It is a reminder to stop and think about the implications of “everything.” We know that all things can work for good, and we need to see that our momentary regrets, especially in this, the Season of Empty Nests, can really be puzzle-pieces in God’s eternal and joyful plan.

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Even after mxplf years (gee, how strange: a typo) since my youngest went off to college, I still get as misty as Maynard G. Krebs when I listen to Suzy Bogguss’s bittersweet classic about a child’s Rite of Passage, “Letting Go.” The lyrics about the empty nest, and turning the page on memories, are wonderfully captured in the video with the song. Please treat yourself.

Click: Letting Go

8-19-13

I attended a local theater production of “Fiddler on the Roof” this week. The legendary musical and the Yiddish story that inspired it concern themselves with assimilation, and, of course, tradition – the writer Sholem Aleichem was a sensitive genius – but I found myself, this week, seeing it as a strong treatment of the relationship of fathers and daughters.

One reason might be that this week was the first anniversary of my granddaughter Sarah’s birth; followed after nine days by her death. The precious preemie, in the words on the grave marker her parents placed over the tiny casket, will always be loved and never forgotten.

We cannot quantify, and scarcely begin a manner to measure, the loss and grief in the hearts of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, when death visits us. “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure,” said a hero of mine, Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote this after his son Quentin was killed in a World War I dogfight over French battlefields; we he left unsaid is the anguish of those left behind as others join that Great Adventure. And those who watch die a child not yet of the age of knowing.

I thought further about the notable paucity of father-daughter relationships in sacred writings, mythology, and literature. Unless there is a hole in my memory (and I invite discussion) the subtext of Aleichem’s story is a rare theme. Think: most of the resonant generational male-female stories in the myths of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. are mother-son, not father-daughter. Isis married her brother and became mother of Horus. The legend of Oedipus was, famously, a son-mother tale. The complicated cosmogony of Roman deities was comprised of some father-daughter relationships, as of course anything emanating from life, real or invented, cannot avoid – however, virtually all of the significant relational myths are father-son, brother-brother, or, sometimes, mother-son.

In the Bible it is rather the same. Fathers have daughters, of course, but the significant stories and lessons seldom involved fathers and their daughters. Adam and Eve had two sons; Noah had three. Abraham was challenged to sacrifice his son… with the attendant emotions and reflections readers cannot avoid. Indeed, God the Father arranged that His only begotten Son be sacrificed. Lot’s daughters? Not our role models. Naomi and Ruth: meaningful story, but not father-daughter. We revere Mary through the Magnificat, and empathize with her presence at the cross and the tomb, but by inference.

In literature we find, again, numerous enough examples of fathers and daughters, but portrayals are seldom invested with the cathartic implications of male-to-male relationships, or mothers-and-sons. Curious, really. Often, characters who are the daughters of fathers are cast as manifestations of rebellion or symbols of fulfillment – filling roles of the weak paterfamilias. Interesting literary devices, but, again, failing to examine the love, the special love, that exists between father and daughter.

A few examples: Shakespeare’s daughters often were social surrogates more than generational, emotional partners. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet came of age and was willful in part because her father, Capulet, was not. The rebellions of Desdemona and Jessica (in “Othello” and “Merchant of Venice”) were as two-dimensional as the compliance of Ophelia in “Hamlet”; that is, bereft of mature love. Pure hate we see in the daughters Goneril and Regan in the tragedy of tragedies, “King Lear,” while their sister Cordelia is an exception that proves my rule.

In more recent literature, the daughters in the novels and plays of Goldsmith, and the novels of Austen where they rose to be lead characters, asserted themselves almost always as patient surrogates for weak-willed fathers. Their fulfillment usually was prompted as much by duty, or pity, as much as by love. The same can largely be said of the daughters in Thackeray and Dickens.

Well, I have broken my intention of keeping this introduction to a compelling riddle brief. I will segue by wondering (a facile escape, not a logical answer) whether fables, and the Bible, and literature, come up short on treatments of father-daughter bonds for same reason they seldom address why the sky is blue or why trees are made of wood: the obvious need not be addressed. But 10,000 speculative essays cannot convey the truth, and the depth, of father-daughter love as to experience, as a shy and crusty bad dancer, the invitation to dance with your daughter to the corny “Daddy’s Little Girl” at her wedding reception.

So the “Fiddler” performance reinforced my thoughts on the anniversary of Sarah’s death. Early and in distress, she lived only nine days.

Pain and sorrow, especially for Pat and my Heather and Sarah’s two brothers Gabe and Zach, will never disappear and scarcely dissipate, although God grants peace and acceptance in His measurements of grace.

From the blog Heather started after Sarah’s death (http://sarahs-baby-steps.blogspot.com/ ):
“Can I let you know that grief isn’t like a pit that you climb out of or like a fork in the road that you walk away from? Our grief and sadness will be a part of our lives until we are reunited with Sarah in heaven. We are healing from the ‘rawness’ of the grief, but we still have difficult moments…. I’ve heard it said that we learn from our children even as we are teaching them and I believe that is true…. We didn’t know Sarah personally very long, but the experience of having known her and then dealing with the grief of missing her has changed us deeply.”

There is a way that fathers can bond with departed daughters… or any readers, with any families of babies who have died. After Sarah died, a nurse offered a dress that was, sadly, unused in a similar situation, for a photo to be taken. Heather continues the story: “We decided to just lay the dress on Sarah and tuck it around her so as not to move her much. It was a beautiful white crocheted dress with a pink rosette and was just what I had envisioned for her baptism dress. Later, after pictures, I asked about it and if they had lots of dresses–I assumed there was a closet-full. [The nurse] said that she had been given the dress awhile ago and told to give it to a family who needed it. For whatever reason, she felt we were the right family. That kindness shown to us and our daughter took a bit of the rawness out of the day. Our girl was ‘dressed up’ for a bit and we got to have sweet pictures taken as a family.

“We started a fund to provide dresses to families whose preemies are in the NICU where Sarah was. Much more was generously given that we ever thought. The [nurse] says that the donations given in Sarah’s name ‘have currently purchased over 75 beautifully handmade layette sets for infants and their grieving families.'”

What a beautiful concept. If anyone is moved, please consider a donation. See below.

Otherwise, take a moment any time (or many times) during the anniversary of Sarah’s life, Aug. 14-23, and remember a brief life, a tender life situation, a lost life… the precious gift of Life itself, in all its ways and promise.

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“Going Home” has become a sacred song for those who have passed from life. It is actually a Negro spiritual based on the tune of the second movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” Performed here, in church, by the London churchboy’s choir Libera.

Click: Going Home

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NICU Dress fund
Donations can be made to “William Beaumont Hospital NICU” in memory of Sarah Shaw…. We would like to provide dresses in Sarah’s memory for other families who have to say goodbye to their little girls. This is a fund we started to support families in their grief. Checks or micro-preemie dresses (button or closures in the back, please) may be sent to William Beaumont Hospital, 3601 W. Thirteen Mile Rd. Royal Oak, MI 48073-6769 Attn: Mara Sipols). Please put “Sarah Shaw” in the memo of checks so your donation goes to the right fund.

8-11-13

A friend, the noted theatrical impresario Charles Putnam Basbas, recently forwarded one of those oft-forwarded internet stories to me. The story of a miracle baby born prematurely, it was not outrageously implausible (not to me anyway; my children were born 10 weeks, five weeks, and eight weeks early around 30 years ago when those factors were dicey; and they had, and have, healthy, robust lives). Yet this story, as full of meaning as of surprises, checked out as true when I pursued “truth or fiction” sites.

Maybe you, too, have read it:

The Smell of Rain

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24 weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple’s new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.

At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it,” he said, as kindly as he could. “There’s only a 10 per cent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one.”

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.

“No! No!” was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.

But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Danae’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially “raw,” the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.

There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there. At last, when Danae turned two months old. her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.

[Five years later] Danae was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing.
As always, Danae was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby, when she suddenly fell silent . Hugging her arms across her chest, little Danae asked, “Do you smell that?”

Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, “Yes, it smells like rain.”

Danae closed her eyes and again asked, “Do you smell that?”

Once again, her mother replied, “Yes, I think we’re about to get wet. It smells like rain.”

Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, “No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on his chest.”

Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Danae happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.

During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

Back to MMMM. As I noted, in recent years, Danae’s story has circulated on the internet. It first was published in Richard L. Scott’s book, Miracles In Our Midst: Stories of Life, Love, Kindness, and Other Miracles (Wessex House). Scott, the former CEO of Columbia Health Systems and currently the Republican governor of Florida, sought out tales of triumph over medical odds. Danae’s story (then titled “Heaven Scent”) is his favorite. That little girl Danae, without knowing it, has inspired many people. An angel, in her own way.

To me, the spiritual “icing on the cake” to this story Charlie forwarded was someone’s legend at the bottom:

ANGELS EXIST, but sometimes, since they don’t all have wings, we call them FRIENDS.

And this summation reminded me of a song with a spiritual message, sung by a secular singer, the great Delbert McClinton (who is great even when Vince Gill and Lee Roy Parnell are not backing him up…) —

Click: Sending Me Angels (Just Like You)

8-5-13

A guest message by one of my great friends and a most insightful and sensitive writer, Leah C. Morgan:

I’ve never been acquainted with stress. People throw the claim around, and plenty act like they indeed really are stressed over everything, but it’s always been a stranger to me. Now because of some recent challenges I am fighting to push the weight off my chest, to keep the sickness in my gut at bay.
 
Here’s how. My husband Bonnard has been teaching on Creation and Evolution at church. We have talked about laws of probability and physics, many wonderful things. But the facts presented last week did something supernatural for me: facts inspired my faith.
 
If the distance from the earth to the sun were represented by the thickness of a single sheet of paper, do you know how close we are to the next nearest star? Using the same scale, we would need a 71-foot stack of paper to span the distance. We would need 310 miles of stacked paper of that normal thickness to reach outside our galaxy. And 31-million miles of stacked paper to reach the end of the galaxy known to us.
 
If the sun were hollow, it could hold 1,300,000 earths. But the star Antares could hold 64-million suns! And the star Hercules could hold 100-million Antares; and the star Epsilon could hold 125- million Hercules.
 
“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?”
 
The earth that we live on, and love, is smaller than a speck in the universe; and I am microscopically smaller than that. And yet God tunes his ear to my pleas, He listens to my cries for help and my words of adoration, and is moved for me.

I know He is near. He’s so far away in the vast, wide sum of his creation, but yet He is close by. I’m so absolutely convinced of His love for me. He is for me. For some reason, like a love that’s bigger than Epsilon, He’s interested and compassionate and busy for me.
 
The weight on my chest is gone, the crowded thoughts in my mind are swept clear, when I think that although I might need a telescope to see God, He’s got a microscope on me. 

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The group of “Christian Tenors” known as Sing! Tenore is comprised of Shane Wiebe, Jason Catron, and Mark David Williams. On this vid, illustrating Leah’s spiritual cosmology, they perform, with the Prague Orchestra, “This Is My Father’s World.”

Click: This Is My Father’s World