Fifty years ago today two great men died. JFK is on all of our minds. C.S. Lewis was the other. Had he died on any other day than November 22, 1963, the world would have taken notice of C.S. Lewis’s death. Click HERE for a piece on C. S. Lewis.
I remember the assassination of JFK like it was yesterday. I didn’t know then that C.S. Lewis had also died. May they both rest in peace. They both live on in a world of woe and hope.
Christ Hospital, Cincinnati, OH
“Mom’s had a heart attack,” said Polly’s daughter. “She’s at Christ Hospital. There’s really no reason to visit. Most days she doesn’t even know me anymore.”
For eleven years we had shared the same church in Cincinnati. Polly had been chair of the Pastor Search Committee that invited me to candidate for the position of Pastor at Knox Presbyterian Church, and over the years the times together over cocktails and dinner had been frequent before we moved to Minneapolis.
I walk into her room in the cardiac care center expecting nothing.
I say her name. She opens her eyes and stares. “Well, Gordon Campbell Stewart, what are you doing here?”
“Well, that’s not the question. The question is what are you doing in a place like this?” We both chuckle, as we so often had done over something that had struck our shared funny bone.
She asks about the boys and how things are in Minneapolis. She’s clear as a bell for a good three minutes until she goes away to wherever people with Alzheimer’s go when they’ve had enough of consciousness.
Buried somewhere deep in the depths of Alzheimer’s are sacred memories that bubble up for a just a moment before they slip back down into the reservoir from which they’ve been drawn. When they bubble up, we know we are standing on holy ground. The bush is burning but it is not consumed.
Barclay, the 6 month old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, walks on his leash in the pastor’s hand down the long first floor hall of the memory care center. People stop and smile. Barclay paws at their legs, scaring a few, but mostly arousing greater desire to touch his soft, fluffy fur.
This is Barclay’s first experience in the memory care center. It’s also his first ride on an elevator. We take the elevator to the second floor.
I knock on the door. We walk in the room to see a parishioner who loves dogs. She’s always had a dog before she lost her independence. Barclay goes to the bed, puts his paws on the side of the bed, and begs to be lifted to say hello to Susan. Susan’s eyes open wide. “Oh, my!” she says. Her face is beaming. I lift Barclay to meet Susan. She reaches out to touch and is delighted by his softness. He licks her face, kisses her mouth, brings her to the rapture only a puppy can at this point in her dying life. There is no time. Time disappears. There is no then. No there. No anywhere but here, no time but now in puppy time on the second floor of the memory care center where Susan doesn’t know she is.
There is NOTHING in this world like a puppy. He just loves everyone the same whether or not we know our own names. Is it a coincidence that ‘dog’ spelled backwards Is ‘god’?
Barclay is watching from the floor. His “owner” is doing something with Susan. “Dad” tales Susan’s hand. They’re holding hands. They close their eyes. Dad is talking in a peaceful tone of voice Barclay hasn’t heard before. It’s very quiet in the room. Susan’s face relaxes and is at peace. Long after Dad has stopped talking, Susan’s eyes stay closed. They hold hands for a long time in the silence. She is at peace. Maybe Susan has gone to be with dog.
She rides the elevator in the memory care center every evening after dinner, hoping to get to the 3rd floor. There’s a button for the 3rd floor but, no matter how many times she pushes the button, the highest she gets is the second floor. (The third floor is locked off in the memory care center.)
She gets off on the second floor, greets the two men sitting in the chairs in the alcove, and shuffles down the long hallway. At the end of the hall, she does an about face and returns to the elevator, greeting us again as though she’s never seen us before. She mumbles something about the third floor. She pushes the elevator button. Elevator opens. She gets on. Elevator door opens. She gets off, greets us, mumbling something about the third floor, and repeats the pattern. Over and over again.
The two men in the alcove are consulting about their loved one in a room on the second floor who’s suffered a stroke, a TIA, or a heart attack. We don’t know which. All we know is that she has taken a turn for the worse during lunch. Our loved one is resting quietly after her pastor’s visit. She she had taken his face in her hands with clarity of mind enough for a smile and bantering humor. The prayer has taken her deep into some place no one can touch, come place of comfort the world cannot take away, some place maybe on the third floor.
My friend Steve reads way too widely sometimes. The following are rated R or at least PG.
An Old Roué’s Laments
There are no extra-marital thrills,
My ardor grows hot and then chills,
For my wife is quite sly,
She forbids me to try,
And she counts all my little blue pills!
On computers, I never watch porn
No memory makes me forlorn:
My passwords are long gone,
I can’t get my log-on,
Drinking buddies all hold me in scorn.
– S. Robertson
Note from Steve: I pass these on, in spite of their semi-scurrilous content, because the news these days is mainly depressing and I needed a laugh and thought you might, too.
– Steve Shoemaker
In harmony with the Tao
The sky is clear and spacious
The Earth is solid and full
All creatures flourish together
Content with the way they are
Endlessly repeating themselves
Endless renewed.
When man interferes with the Tao,
The sky becomes filthy
The earth becomes depleted
The equilibrium crumbles
Creatures become extinct.
The Master views the parts with compassion
Because he understands the whole.
His constant practice is humility
He doesn’t glitter like a jewel
But lets himself be shaped by the Tao
As rugged and common as a stone.
– Lao Tzu
This was sent by the Brazilian flutist and saxophonist who played last Friday evening in Hudson, WI. He is the first of the artists to respond to the Call to create artists “Before the Planetary Requiem” in the face of scientific evidence for Climate Departure. “Before the Planetary Requiem” was posted here on Views from the Edge yesterday. Interesting that his response is from one of the ancient figures of holy and practical wisdom.
Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees
Takes off his shoes –
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Join the Call to Artists to take off your shoes before climate departure leaves us with no blackberries to pluck. Read yesterday’s post: Before the Planetary Requiem
If scientists are right (see Nature), by 2020 the first effects of Climate Departure should already be a part of the human experience.
In light of both science and faith, Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN is issuing this invitation in anticipation of Earth Day, 2020, in hopes it will catch on. The Call is conceived by visual artist and scientist John Lince-Hopkins, a member of Shepherd of the Hill:
EARTH DAY
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
A GLOBAL CALL TO CREATIVE PEOPLE OF ALL TYPES TO CREATE, PERFORM, AND DISPLAY THEIR BEST WORKS:
COMPOSERS,
MUSICIANS,
MUSICAL GROUPS,
RECORDING ARTISTS,
AUTHORS,
POETS,
VISUAL ARTISTS,
PHOTOGRAPHERS,
VIDEOGRAPHERS,
FIBER ARTISTS,
PERFORMANCE ARTISTS,
DANCERS,
…AND THOSE UN-NAMED.
JUST SEVEN SHORT YEARS TO CREATE SEMINAL WORKS ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR PLANET AND OUR REALIZATION OF THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CLIMATE TO ALL LIVING THINGS AND THE ECOSYSTEMS THAT SUPPORT THEM.
Think Globally, Act Locally!
Dirty sock washing
Marguerite was a bit different. Brilliant. Socially challenged. Single. The church group of singles and young marrieds was her closest thing to family. The family was used to the quirks, except for the newly married minister’s wife who’d never seen anything like this.
“What are you doing?”
“Washing my socks.”
“Why?”
“They’re wet.”
Recognizing that Marguerite was clueless, the 22-year-old minister’s wife quietly moved the splattered dish of hors d’oeuvres and the punch bowl to the long table nearby and saved her comments for later. Sometimes you have to stuff a sock in your mouth. Without room for every kind, a church is not a church.
Disclaimer: The picture is not from the church and it’s not Marguerite. It’s staged…I think.
And the first deep cold
This year came
Before the lawn chairs
Were inside
The old brown shed.
The fall leaves
Bright red and yellow
Froze in mats
Unraked and unbagged
Under the thick snow.
The bird bath
Cracked and the hoses
Split from ice
Expanding cruelly
Relentlessly.
Will my clear
Procrastination
Be punished
All winter long or
Will a warm week
Bring forgiveness?
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, November 13, 2013
Views from the Edge 