Donna VanderGriend

Another moment drops into my momentum bucket.  Time’s liquid is inching toward the three-score-and-ten mark.  Even as the pail fills, I am evaporating.  My significance pales; I am in diminishment mode. But I have not yet disappeared. So why not play?

First grade grandson Josiah asks again to play the Memory Game at the kitchen table.  Having far more intact and uncluttered memory bytes than I, he always wins.  My hand hovers hesitatingly over a card choice, hoping to find a match. 

“Look at your hands, Grandma…that’s gross!” he says.  I see what he sees.  It’s my veins, I conclude.  The backside of my hand looks like the topography of several small mountain ranges marked out by blob-trails of murky grey-green finger paint.

A Spirit-thought comes to me out of the hovering.  “But, Josiah…watch this.”  I put my elbow on the table and my hand in the air with the backside visible to him.  As my fingers fold into a relaxed looseness, the blood obeys gravity, slides down my arm, and leaves my hand smooth as the Great Plains.

“Wow!” exclaims my grandson.  “I want to do that.”  He drops an elbow on the table, situates his own hand at eye level, and stares.  Gravity is of no use on his already smooth, un-mottled skin.

“Do it again, Grandma,” he requests, sure he is missing part of the procedure.  He pays undivided attention to the blood-draining and tries again to repeat the miracle of veins at work.  Nothing.


Josiah looks at my aging hands resting in quiet victory next to the unturned game pieces on the table, the mountain map protrusions and wrinkled valleys obvious once again.  I watch his wide eyes display discovery:  his grandmother’s hands are no longer gross; they are full of ancient mystery.   I feel my evaporating self expand through the eyes of my grandchild.



(Check out The SheSpeaks Conference which promotes inter-generational learning, believing that midwifery on behalf of each other has no age limits.  Those of us hovering around age 70 are ‘dying’ to still be servants of God’s Word, to speak wisdom into those older and younger than ourselves, and to be reminded that we are vitally alive because He lives in us!    Scholarship information available here!)
 

The Prayer of Oscar Romero

Today President Obama visited the final resting place of Oscar Romero. To understand how important this gesture was in the healing of old wounds in El Salvador, read this article.  When we prepare for our trips to El Salvador, we often read the Prayer of Oscar Romero.  In researching it today, I find that it was not actually written by Oscar Romero, but was composed by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Cardinal John Dearden in Nov. 1979 for a celebration of departed priests.  As a reflection on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Romero, Bishop Untener included in a reflection book a passage titled "The mystery of the Romero Prayer."   The mystery is that the words of the prayer are attributed to Oscar Romero, but they were never spoken by him.”

“Oscar A. Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, in El Salvador, was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in a small chapel in a cancer hospital where he lived. He had always been close to his people, preached a prophetic gospel, denouncing the injustice in his country and supporting the development of popular and mass organizations. He became the voice of the Salvadoran people when all other channels of expression had been crushed by the repression."


Here is the prayer, and I am proud that our President is willing to put aside the mistakes of the past and join with the people of El Salvador! 

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
Amen.

Memory

I must continue to write about aging, since I seem to be unable to stop the steady onward progression!  This is a great spoof! 

Indomitable Me!

On my now defunct blog, Grace and Gravity, I once wrote this post about the power of compliments.   I recalled that post and that compliment this week when another good friend sent me the following email, as a follow up to our recent mission trip to El Salvador:

Terry,
I’m back for only a few days and I already miss the people and the heat of El Salvador (as I walk around a heated house wrapped in a blanket) as well as the team.  In retrospect, it was a marvelous trip that is more appreciated every day by its very absence.  Thanks for your indomitable attitude and enthusiasm. Kudos for Ken too who was always available to help out with translations and a helping hand.

I was touched and looked up the word "indomitable," just to be sure.  And here is the definition:  "impossible to subdue or defeat."   I must admit that I do not always consider this to be true of myself in all situations, but there is something about this particular trip and this particular team and this particular country full of these amazing villagers that brings out those qualities in me.  And I am especially grateful and honored by the compliment.  I left in the part about Ken, as well, as we all need to hear that we are appreciated!

I will be writing about El Salvador in the near future, but for today, the compliment is greatly appreciated!  Thanks, Kike!

Cracked Pots

This was sent to me recently by a friend.  I'm not aware of who wrote it or where it started, but it is a great lesson for all of us.  I often feel like a "cracked pot" myself!

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. 'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.' The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?' 'That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.' For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.'

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

Set Free

I must admit to something. I have not developed a solid pro- or anti-death penalty view in my 62 years on this earth. I vacillate between "an eye for an eye" of the Old Testament and "doing unto others" from the New. I hate to see criminals "get away with murder," but I also dislike everything I've ever heard about the death penalty, how it is administered, and how the justice system often fails. 

Two recent things have me thinking. The first is a book I just read, The Confession, by John Grisham. In this page turner, a young black man is obviously wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to the death penalty. I will not be a spoiler and tell the entire story, but it is a book that has deeply impacted my thinking. It takes place in Texas and does not paint a very pretty picture of the Texas legal system of the past.

The second is the headline "DNA exonerates another Dallas man." Because of the use of DNA testing and the fact that Dallas did indeed save evidence samples, Cornelius Dupree Jr. is now a free man, having served 30 years for rape and robbery, convicted on scant evidence in 1979. The story goes on to say that there have been 21 DNA exonerations in Dallas County in which all but one were the result of faulty eyewitness identifications.  The number in the entire United States is much higher.

I, for one, do not want to play God.  The system is incredibly flawed.  I cannot imagine spending all of one's youth in prison for a crime I didn't commit. 

Heartwarming Hallelujah Chorus

After all the versions of the Hallelujah Chorus I have seen this year, I might have to choose this one as my very favorite!