Mother's Day Memory

One of the pictures in my study is a photograph of two red Gerbera daisies. One is in full bloom and the other is just beginning to open. It looks like a sunshiny day. The flower’s foliage is lush and green. Occasionally someone will pick up the picture and ask, “Why do you have a picture of these two flowers on your desk?” And I answer their question with a story. 

It goes back more than twenty years. Coming home from a two-week trip I began to catch up on the news with my wife. She had traveled south while I had studied up north. On the way home she had stopped by my mother’s house in Georgia and learned she was in the hospital. In her eighties, Mother’s trips to the hospital were coming closer together.

“Oh by the way,” my wife said, “your mother sent you some flowers. Gerbera daisies,” she said. My wife reported, “Just before she got sick she told me that she went to a nursery, found two plants at a good price. She instructed me to go by her house when I left the hospital, get the daisies, be careful with them, and bring them home to you. She gave me strict instructions not to plant them here.” We were moving soon and so she told my wife, “That old red South Carolina mud won’t grow nothin’—take the plants to Memphis and plant them when you move.”  

When I talked to my mother on the telephone she wanted to know about the daisies. “Give them plenty of water, keep them out of the full sun until they’re planted and take them with you to Memphis. Now don’t put them in that moving van—you put them in your car.”That was our last conversation. She died less than a week later. 

I left the plants with a neighbor while we went to Georgia for the funeral. I wanted to make sure they were all right. And so we stood with family and friends in the cemetery on a hot July afternoon and said our sad goodbyes. 

We moved weeks later to Tennessee. One of the last things I did as we closed up our house was to put the daisies in my car. A week later on a hot Sunday morning I planted my daisy plants in the Tennessee soil in our side yard. It was a painful time, planting the flowers my Mother had given me. Grief came surging back. As I mulched the flowers I remember praying, “Dear God, let them live. Let them live.” It was late August. 

My birthday fell on a Saturday in October that year. As I went to get the paper I was dumbfounded by what I saw. One of the daisies had the prettiest red bloom and another bud was barely opening. I don’t know much about this flower except October is very late for a Gerbera daisy to bloom. I charged into the house and told my wife, “You won’t believe what’s outside. One of mother’s daisies is blooming on my birthday!”It was her final gift of so many others she had given me through the years. Even after her death, her gift came alive. The long arm of her love touches me still. The picture you see here I took on that birthday morning.

Frost came early that year. The flowers wilted. I hoped the daisies would live through the winter—but Gerbera daisies don’t usually do that. The next spring the flowers never came up. But this I know—that daisy bloomed on my birthday. The flowers didn’t come back—but they did their work in a hard time. And even after all these years I look at that picture and smile. Grace, stubborn grace, comes in the strangest of ways. And so I told my friend this is why I keep this picture of that gerbera daisy on my desk.

(This one of my favorite Mama stories.  I had this piece on my blog several years ago--but I wanted to share it with those who have not read it--but might enjoy it.)

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Several years ago I attended the funeral of a very great lady in Huntsville, Alabama. At that service one of her daughter's read the following poem. I had never read this poem by Billy Collins before. It can be found in his book, The Trouble With Poetry. He has captured Mother's Day in a wonderful tribute.

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one into the past more suddenly--

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to braid long thin plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

or wear one, if that's what you did with them,

but that did not keep me from crossing

strand over strand again and again

until I had made a boxy

red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

 and here, in the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift--not the worn truth

that you can never replay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

(In loving memory of my mother, Ruth Kelley Lovette who died in 1988.)

Just read Timothy Egan's moving story of his mother's last weeks. Quite a tribute. Quite a woman.  "The Last Mother's Day."  Worth the read.

Light--There's Nothing Like It

"Thou didst in our darkest hour

Rend the clouds and show thy light."

--St. Thomas Aquinas

We moved back to South Carolina in December. And what sold me on the house we bought was the light. The living room and my soon-to-be-study were both on the front of the house. Both rooms were flooded with morning light. There’s something powerful and healing and hopeful, too I think—to get up in the morning and see the sunlight flooding the front rooms of the house. To throw open the shutters and, literally let the sunshine in. That morning light is full of promise. There stretches before me a brand new day that, as Buechner says, is to be opened like a present.

But too often I ignore that light or miss it altogether. I’m concentrating on what the TV has said about Obama or Romney or Gingrich pulling out or all those BB guns aimed at the President. Why he dares to mention the death of Osama bin Laden on the anniversary of his death.  But it doesn’t matter what the President says or does—the BB guns are out and aimed toward him. I unfold the paper and read the headlines and turn to our one editorial page. More bad news. It sells papers and keeps people watching TV.

All this is diversion. I mutter about the distractions of the politicians and the pundits—but I’m as guilty as they. There is a whole lot that turns us away from the light—flooding our day with anger, fear and often hopelessness.

Why do many of us opt for these diversions when we have been given a present of this wonderful light? I do not know. The Bible talks a lot about light. Light is a powerful metaphor in the Bible.  Genesis tells us that God made the light as well as the darkness. Another writer has called this light good. Christ called himself the light of the world. In Pilgrim’s Progress Pilgrim wondered how he can keep going with the heavy burden on his back. And Evangelist told him, “Do you see yonder shining light?” Pilgrim replied, “I think I do.” Then Evangelist said, “Keep that light in thine eye, and go directly thereto, so shalt thou see the gate...”  

That light is here for all of us. The challenge is to let the beams flood us and everything we touch.  I’m going to try to not take for granted that light that comes, like manna, fresh every morning. Annie Dillard wrote: “I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of it’s beam.” Not a bad way to live a life.

Vote For Jesus--Huh?

Vote For Jesus. I saw this sign often in front of this house on a country road in South Carolina last week. Wonder what it means?  Probably implies that if we finally vote Barack Hussein Obama (emphasis on the Hussein) out of office we can get this country back the way it ought to be. Like Garrison Keillor says: “Where the women are strong and the men are good looking and the kids are above average.” Or better put” Where men are real mean and not girlie boys—women stay at home and raise babies and have supper ready when he men folk get home. Where the kids don’t get into drugs or cuss like sailors and dip into the wrong things on the Internet. Vote for Jesus and we’ll go back to a country where immigrants were immigrants and citizens were American loving countrymen. Vote for Jesus and magically the economy will turn around and the private sector—not the government will take care of all of us. 

But that’s only one side of the coin. Vote for Jesus could mean making sure the Republicans are left in the dust. That we put people like Santorum and Romney and Limbaugh and a whole lot of others in their place. And that place would be, of course the back of the line. Vote for Jesus would mean that we would bring all our troops home and we would study war no more. And—we'd all have health care and the poor would have a safety net and maybe we could secure Social Security and Medicare and just calm down. The temperature is way too high. Voting for Jesus will make sure the winds and waves really do calm down. Peace Be Still. 

Jim Wallis recently wrote that our problem is that we see politics as our salvation. That politics really is our primary idolatry. He says that our politics these days shapes our faith and the worship of God ought to shape our politics. To vote for Jesus, then is to make sure our side wins—and if that happens surely the kingdom of God will be a whole lot closer than it was before November 2012. 

Read Jim Wallis article for yourself. He says the Kingdom of God and the United States of America are not synonymous. Surely he must be a Socialist and soft on Terrorism. He implies that liberty and justice for all really does mean what it says. And that the dream of the Founding Fathers was really was for the common good—even though they missed it by a country mile. But the dream remains. 

We can tear ourselves apart. What family does not have people on the other side of the issue that are just itching to fight over this political thing? Churches are split—and some are pulling out of their denominations over this very issue. Why do we have to choose sides? We are right and you wrong. Somehow—we are going to have to get along with each other.  

Yep we can vote for Jesus but it won’t mean anybody’s side wins. It will mean we pull off the blinders and know that politics cannot bring in the Kingdom. I keep remembering that terrible verse in the Psalms: “He gave them up to their request, but sent leanness to their souls.” Voting Jesus may bring in some lean times but it would also mean that we would not kill each other off in the name of God. We have some work to do.

A Tribute to a Good Friend: Marion Aldridge

(I was asked to be one of the speakers at a dinner honoring a good friend,  Marion Aldridge. Marion is a Baptist minister who has worn many hats. Pastor. Husband. Father. Clemson fan. Writer. Traveler. Lover of life. He will be retiring from his position as Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in South Carolina in January. The Cooperative Fellowship began some twenty years ago as an alternative to the fundamentalist turn of the Southern Baptists. Marion has served well in this position for 15 years. My remarks at the dinner are found here.)

What am I gonna say about Marion? There’s a lot I won’t say, I can’t say—and I shouldn’t say. But it’s not hard to talk about somebody that you have appreciated and admired since the late seventies. One of my blog buddies is Philip Jenks. Recently he wrote about The Good Shepherd and sheep. He begins that blog by asking have you ever smelled a sheep? They’re nothing like those pictures we see in the Sunday school rooms—Big sheep can’t be carried because are too big. Jenks goes on to say that being a Good Shepherd is a whole lot harder than it looks.  

And that’s what I want to talk about tonight. Marion Aldridge has been a good shepherd and he has smelled some sheep in his time—and he has walked ever so gently among them and behind a great many of them. But hard work has not stopped this Shepherd. He has come along at a time when Baptists were changing. And he dared to stick his neck out and talk about what was wrong with where we were going and the possibilities for the unknown and uncertain scary future. A lot of church folk didn't want to hear that. So being that kind of a Shepherd was a whole lot harder than it looked. 

But Marion hung in there. He pastored churches. He wrote books and splendid articles. And he didn’t say what people always wanted him to say—but he said what he thought they needed to hear. He never parked his brain outside the church door. Marion has been a Good Shepherd and Sally of all people knows how difficult that was some time. 

It was a great day when he was elected him to lead South Carolina CBF. He has worked tirelessly for a cause that he believes in—and working with churches that often did not understand and sometimes were very troubled. Some days he must have felt that being a Good Shepherd was harder than it looked. 

Weeks ago we had a funeral for a good friend of Marion’s. Clemson’s Mayor—Larry Abernathy. And I was very proud when Marion got up to speak in that very crowded room. I told somebody after his remarks that CBF could be very proud to have someone of Marion’s depth and commitment to be our spokesperson. We have been most fortunate. 

A good Shepherd stays with the sheep—the stubborn sheep and the docile sheep and the mean sheep. So if you want a good definition of commitment-you might look under the words: Marion Aldridge. He has kept at it through thick and thin. He has been a good Shepherd for Jesus Christ.  

George Buttrick, in his eighties, looked back on his years as a minister and said, “Despite it all—I am proud to be a member of this club.” Marion Aldridge has made a lot of us proud to be a member of this club. 

I want to thank him for all he has done for so many of us. I don’t know any better way to say it than using the words George Thurber used of his Editor at The New Yorker, Ross after he retired. This is what he said: “He just kept going like a bullet-torn battle flag and nobody captured his colors and nobody silenced his drums.” Marion learned early that sheep stink pretty bad. But he also knew that sheep need a good leader. But given all of that--he has been a very Good Shepherd even though most do not know that has been harder than it looks. We thank you Marion that nobody has captured your colors and nobody has silenced your drums.

(The photograph above is Marion Aldridge and his beloved wife, Sally.)

Perspective--Rejoicing in the Smallest of Victories

It's hard for any of us today to keep a healthy perspective. We are all about the drown in a sea of negativism. One has only to listen to the political candidates. If you don't vote for me well, the sky really will fall. Then there's the killing of that 17 year old black man by a self-appointed vigilante with a gun. Or maybe that soldier who murdered seventeen adults and children in Afghanistan. We hear about possible Nuclear weapons in North Korea or Iran. And then there is Israel, contemplating a preemptive strike against Iraq--before Iraq hits them. Meanwhile back at home immigrants are still scared about their status. We we worry about what will happen in the Supreme Court rulings. On both sides of my house are beautiful homes that have sat vacant for two years and never been lived in. Across the street is a large weed-filled couple of lots. Three homes were to be built there but the bubble hit and recovery is still a long time coming. No use footnoting our time any further. Everywhere we turn it's hard to see any silver lining.

But I keep trying to remember a story I heard not too long ago. A man was talking to his friend who spent all his time helping others. Sometimes it was Habitat, often working in a homeless shelter, occasionally writing letters to the local paper protesting injustice in our state. He never stops helping and trying. He's had, in his day a great many failures and disappointments but here and there he has made a difference in someone's life. This friend asked him, "With all the craziness going on and so many things so wrong--what keeps you going? How do you keep on doing these good deeds?" "How?" the friend said, " I keep doing it because I rejoice in the smallest of victories." Hmm. Seems like a pretty good prescription for a hard time.

Want to read a story about an ordinary citizen  whose actions made an incredible difference? I found it last week on the "Lives" column in the Sunday New York Times. It seems that this 18 year old found herself pregnant. Sitting in the doctor's office she began talking to the woman next her who was a friend of her mother's."Where's your mother?" the friend asked. The girl told her when she became pregnant they kicked her out of the house and the family turned their back on her. She was all alone.

The woman asked the pregnant girl to have lunch with her at her house. She did and this was the beginning of a friendship that may have just saved this girl's life. The woman asked her when was her baby shower. The girl shook her head and said, "She wouldn't have one." And the woman said that every mother-to-be need a baby shower. So--weeks later this woman she hardly knew threw the biggest party you could imagine. I won't bore you with the rest of the story. Read it for yourself. I think it may just warm your heart.

Maybe none of us can save this crazy world. But we pass people every day that are hanging on by their fingernails. Sometimes a word, a deed, a reaching out makes all the difference. And perhaps for us late at night after the 11:00 news--we think back on some small victory that happened today and we smile and we rejoice.

Holocaust--Let Us Remember

Something inescapable is lost--

lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,

vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars

immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone--

gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,

scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass

and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past--

blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,

and finally has swept into a corner where it lies

in dust and cobwebs and silence.

Michael R. Burch, "Something" for the children of the holocaust

Yesterday was a Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust victims. The old book of Deuteronomy tells us: "Only take heed, and keep your soul diligently, Lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, And lest they depart from your hearts all the days of your life; Make them known to your children and your children's children." (Deuteronomy 4.9) Let's remember the over six million who died at the hands of the Nazis. It was not only Jews that perished but also all the others that were deemed "inferior" by the Third Reich. That sad list included Roma Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, Russians, homosexuals, and people with physical and mental handicaps. 

After all these years it is still hard to believe the depths of evil that so many people in Germany endured. In the prison camp in Teresin 200,000 people were put to death. Of that number 15,000 were children. Records show that only 132 children survived in that camp.

After those few that were finally liberated little scraps of poems and letters were found stuffed in mattresses and cracks in the walls. Fanta Bass left these words as her last will and testament.

"A little garden,

Fragrant and full of roses

The path is narrow

And the little boy walks alone it.

A little boy, a sweet boy,

Like that growing blossom.

When the blossom comes to bloom,

The little boy will be no more."

In 2011 a book came out  that deals with early days when Hitler was just beginning to come into power. In the Garden of  Beasts, Erik Larson tells the true story that in 1933 William E. Dodd was appointed the first ambassador to Hitler's Germany. Dodd was a mild-mannered professor from Chicago. And he and his wife and son and daughter moved to Berlin. With alarm Dodd watched as Jews were attacked, the press censored and frightening new laws began to circulate. The book traces the steps that ended with the Holocaust. I recommend this volume to anyone who would like to ponder the seeds from which this terrible chapter of our history took place. One of the most disturbing part of the book tells of the antisemitism of many in our government and the refusal of so many important persons to believe the dark memos that Dodd continually sent back home. This is an important book and it helped me to see that evil does not come to any of us full blown but comes slowly always bringing destruction.

In some ways we have not come very far in justice and compassion. The recent stories of American troops urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans was disturbing. Then came the story of the Marine who killed 16 or more people in a blood-bath which included women and old people and children. We still call so many groups "they." Sometimes inferior, always different--our record with immigrants, especially Hispanics, school bullies and those who still consider homosexuals flawed creatures not to mention the brutality that many of those we deem terrorists have experienced from our government.

 Just today I saw a bumper sticker that read: "Honk if you hate Obama." Not if you don't agree or don't like--but hate. What is wrong with so many of our people? Recently Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, Illinois chastised politicians who disagree with the bishop's views on health care reform. His word culminated in the outrageous claim that "Barack Obama seems intent on following a similar path" to Hitler and Stalin who "would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open". There has always been a deep strand of wild rhetoric and outright hate in this country--but you would have thought after all these years we would have learned something.

So on this Holocaust week-end ponder where we have been and where we are. Looks like we still have some homework to do.

(The photograph above shows the moving tribute that an artist has constructed in the Memorial Garden in Budapest to honor the 550,000 Hungarian Jews that died in the Holocaust. The Weeping Willow tree is metal and eight branches emerge from the base of the tree. On each branch are tiny leaves that bear the names of Jewish families that were murdered during those dark days.)

We Remember the Fallen

"One man shall smile one day and say goodbye.
 Two shall be left, two shall be left to die.

One man shall give his best advice.
Three men shall pay the price.

One man shall live, live to regret.
Four men shall meet the debt.

One man shall wake from terror to his bed.
Five men shall be dead.

One man to five. A million men to one.
And still they die. And still the war goes on."
           --James Fenton, "Cambodia"


For a long time in this blog I reported month after month on the names of the US troops that have fallen in this war called terror since 2003. But I stopped after a long time because there were too, too many names and I could not list them all.

But I come back to the war that still rages. Hopefully it really is winding down. But since its inception CNN reports that 7500 men and women have been killed. They come from 20 countries. They were soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors and some US Departmental employees.

We are also told that over 15,672 US troops have been wounded in action. The lives of so many families have been torn apart and will be the same.  These figures do not include all those innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan that have lost their lives. They are really the tip of the iceberg.


 Nicholas D. Kristof writes in Sunday's  New York Times about the suicides that are the result of this war. He writes, :"For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands." And then he adds: "These unnoticed killing fields are places like New Middletown, Ohio, where Cheryl DeBow raised two sons, Michael and Ryan Yurchison, and saw them depart for Iraq." Both young men came home broken. Ryan died of a drug overdose. The mother says of Michael, "He is making some progress. He is able to get out of bed in the morning now."


Kristof writes in moving terms about this epidemic of suicides and broken returnees that we hear little about.  He has discovered that veterans from this war kill themselves at the rte of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are reported every year. Read Kristof's article and remember all those that have fallen.

"When after many battles past,

Both, tired with blows, make peace at last,

What is it, after all, the people get?

Why, taxes, widows, wooden legs, and debt."

--Author Unknown