A Question

Does God grow us in straight line, ever onward toward one end like the sleet pelting against ones nose and backback,

or does He nurture us more in a circling pattern like the first snow flakes of the season tickling the tree branches, teaching us to revisit old thoughts in a new manner and learn anew from past experiences,

or does He gently mist His will and His purity upon us like an autumn rain, only in such amounts that we will be able to bear it,

or does there have to be one answer?

Sometimes I am as confused as the weather was today.

Out the Window

If she meets you in the bathroom

with a sad look on her face,

and a yellow shoe in each hand

dangling from a long white lace,

And she tells you that she's washed them

but the stain can still be seen

and they're really, really wet now,

and she can't remove her screen,

Then open up your window, friend,

And let the shoes hang out,

In company of the golden tree,

And the wind all whistling about.

If she takes the long thin laces white

And ties them in knot

And, coolly, on the hinges there,

she drops those shoes she bought,

And she tells you that she'll leave them there

a-drying in the sun,

until no water droplets drip,

from soles or yellow tongues,

Then open up your window, friend,

and let the shoes hang out,

in the company of the golden tree

and the wind all whistling about.

Old 100 After One Hundred Musings

The number 100 plunges into my brain and triumphantly hauls out a memory or two...

Here's blond Natalie, standing beside her project that was required to be made out of one hundred "somethings." This time, the "somethings" were eggs and she spent days blowing out the gooey innards.

And Dad used to count to one hundred so speedily when we were playing hide and seek out in the woods that I couldn't rightly hear each number, but of course I knew that he wasn't cheating.

Then there's Gramdma, standing at the front of the little Drewsville, NH stone church, her Bible spread out before her. "I will be reading Psalm a hundred," she says with a smile. And she begins: "Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness, come before Him with Joyful singing...

For one hundred posts I have been trying to do that, trying to serve Him through memory, through song, through creativity, through experience, through being me. And He is yet there, much more consistent than my scanty and forgetful musings. He is beyond the regularity of my studies and the enthusiams of my inspirations. And He is much, much more faithful even than the 100th hymn that I sing far too infrequently:

"Great is thy faithfulness, oh God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with thee
Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.


"Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.


"Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.


"Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have need Thy hand has provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me."

Love and Autumn

Today is one of those thoughtful days. The eighth anniversary of my grandfather's death, nearly a month marker since I began my fourth year of college and left my family in Vermont. And it is the first day of Autumn, the first day of fall 2009 which officially began at 5:18 this evening...

Every morning as I sit at the registration counter, I hear an insistent banging at the door at around 9:00 and look up to see them coming in, pushing their daughter to work in a wheel chair. It seems rather switched up-- they up and active, she looking tiny and frail, her hair white and fluffy and thin around her head as if it is one delicate dandelion puff that a sudden breeze might blow throughout the lobby. The unusual trio always looks up and wishes us all a good morning as they pass through and into the hallway, always cheerful, rather together-like. Several minutes later the elderly couple walk slowly back past my desk. I always notice then that they are somewhat stooped, their heads white too, and that they aren't perhaps the spry folks they once were. But then my eyes always stray down a little further to their hands for what I know I will see--fingers strong and tightly twined together.

The trees have begun just a little of their rosy-cheekedness around the parking lot and today the misty rain warmed up what will probably be the last wave of summer campus flowers. But there is a solemn beauty in it all that summer's ecstasy can't quite match.

Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?

She is my hero. I want to tell the world that she can take a shower by herself, that she can go on a trailride, that she will help sweep the the bathhouse with a bit of coaxing. I want to call home and tell them that she let me float her on her stomach in the swimming pool, that she let me braid her hair for church, that her love for bananas no longer keeps her from eating anything else.

I met her last year, a bright eight-year-old who bopped noisily into my cabin and claimed her bunk for the week. I didn't really no what to do with a child with Aspergers, and neither did she know what to do with me, a new authority figure in her world who didn't allow stuffed animals to come to dinner time and who asked her to stay with the rest of the cabin. And so we spent our week in some sort of warfare, physical and spiritual, both of us with tears in our eyes, though tears of rather different sorts. But I wanted to see her again.

This summer, if anything, she waltzes into my cabin with more zest for life, ready to introduce her Webkins to me, telling me to close my eyes and simultaneously unzip her bulging suitcase. I half expect the contents to burst out at me like a well-wound jack-in-the-box, well trained by their exuberant master.

I see immediately that she has grown. Her bright yellow sneakers are undoubtedly larger than last year's shoes, her figure a little taller. But throughout the week I watch as she initiates games with her cabinmates. I watch as she tries new food. I listen as she asks for prayer. I listen as she sings new songs she's learned. I feel her arm sneak around me in a hug at line call. Becky has grown. Something inside her has responded to love. Something inside her has awakened in response to the many prayers surrounding her presence at camp.

She's the one who gives me the words one Sabbath afternoon as the rest of the campers and I sit out on the porch, enjoying solitude and sunshine. "Hey--hey, do you want my signature?" she asks me, coming up with a stamp in hand. "Sure, Becky," I say, curious to see what will happen next. "You--you say. . . " she instructs me as to what I must ask her in order to receive the honor. Then I say what I've been dying to say all week: "Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?" And there on the yellow paper she plants her seal: the name JESUS inked in red and BECKY childishly scrawled below.