2024/40 PEACE SITE

I realize that the ease of our day yesterday, Good Friday, stands in stark contrast to the events of two thousand years ago. Ask any of us here how our day was and we would answer “Good”.  The day has been good for us.

But Jesus, he was good for that day. And every other day. To Him all praise and glory.

Crucifixion
by our dear friend
J Kirk Richards

Dave and I have been with our daughter, Kate, at her beautiful peaceful home near the banks of the Niagara River just before it empties into Lake Ontario. We come each year in the spring for what we call our annual rock harvest. It’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to cleaning up her large upstate New York yard after it has churned up rocks through the winter. In actuality this time Dave has installed two new outlets in her house and garage and a utility sink in her basement. That Dave, he’s such a solid worker-man. Plus, he hums while he works and that makes me happy. Kate and I cleaned her garage and worked on various other little tasks. It’s just so good to be in her home where her spirit vibrates at a lovely comforting frequency.

Each time we drive into Niagara, or into Canada, we pass by a quaint campus on the corner of River Road and Pletcher Road. Stella Niagara, the home of the Sisters of Saint Francis of Penance and Christian Charity. Attached to it is a Montessori School. It’s a quiet, tidy place nestled under some protective old trees facing the wide Niagara River. If you had an especially good throwing arm you could throw a rock over into Canada from Kate’s home, or the nunnery up the road. Or, if the wind is right, it would be easier to blow kisses into Canada.

We pass by Stella Niagara every day. It was only yesterday, when we drove to Niagara to do some shopping, that I paid attention to the sign on the corner.

Stella Niagara
Sisters of St Francis
Established 1908
PEACE SITE

Following in the tradition of St Francis, the Stella Niagara community is dedicated to caring for the environment and fostering peace in the world. It became and official Peace Site in 1989. A brief search of what makes a place take on the moniker of “Peace Site” revealed the following:

An International Peace Site can be an organization, school, home, or community that makes the decision to live out the following Five Peace Actions.

• SEEK peace within yourself and others
• REACH OUT in service
• PROTECT the environment
• RESPECT diversity
• BE a responsible citizen of the world

We came home from our shopping excursion and began talking about the unpeaceful conditions in the Gaza Strip, in a land called Holy. We decided to study a bit of history, which is remarkably easy to do in this day and age when information is at our fingertips. We watched newsreels and read reports and our hearts throbbed under our rising chests. We repeat prayers that rotate in our heads, wondering what we can do from this faraway place with our lack of authority. No Friday there is good. Imagine the cries that have echoed across those ancient hills for centuries of time, all the way back to when three crosses stood on a hill not far away. Isn’t it ironic that the most brutal wars call themselves “Holy?”

It would be a noble aim to make our homes, our churches, our neighborhoods and schools places where people unite with a commitment to peace. I can make my home a Peace Site. It’s a place to start. It’s a safe place for our anxious hearts.

Today ends our forty+ days of Lent, a preparation for the most sacred of holy days in the history of Christiandom. Tomorrow we rejoice in renewal.

A blessed new year to all, founded on the principles we cherish most as we take His name upon us.

Onward, Christian soldiers.

Happy Easter.

"Christus"
J Kirk Richards

You can register to become an official International Peace Site HERE.

2024/39 BREAD FOR JESUS

Every Saturday my sister, Ann Marie, pulls out her trusty workhorse Bosch, fifteen pounds of flour, yeast, salt and a few other basics that reside in her well stocked pantry. She’ll mix these ingredients while she’s talking to you, without even having to think or look at a recipe card. If she didn’t have to measure, she could do it with her eyes closed.

Sunday mornings the Ashby boys run to her house next door and get three of her loaves. Two for the sacrament and one for their family. They’ll head over to the church house before the congregation arrives. There they will lay the sliced bread on a tray. They will take spring water we’ve collected from the artesian well and pour it into pitchers. These they will place on the Sacrament table at the front of our little neighborhood chapel. They’ll set empty trays in front of them like shiny metal soldiers, their shoulders to the square. When everything is arranged correctly, they will cover all of this with a soft white cotton cloth, a shroud over the tokens of our Savior and Redeemer. Next time you’re in Sacrament Meeting at Church look at the table, covered in white, and imagine the body of our Lord underneath.

I sit in our usual spot with my husband and my sisters. I watch the young boys who pass through our driveway daily on their way to school as they line up in their crisp white shirts and combed hair. They surround the table and break my sister’s bread. They carry it to us with reverence. We offer it to each other. It’s a quiet, introspective, lovely ordinance that is central in my week and very personal. It’s how I speak to God; my most basic and most profound personal prayer.

I am always happy when I partake of the holy symbol of our Lord’s body and there is a soft, substantial absolutely delicious texture in my mouth, indicating that my sister in in town. She is grace and generosity and loyalty. I miss her when she’s gone. The whole ward does.

my sister, Ann Marie Mullen

Four of the five girls in our family live in our tiny neck of the woods tucked against the foothills of the Wasatch mountains. The altitude does not work well with our sister Sue’s lungs, or she might be here as well. I consider it the most beautiful tender mercy that in our waning years we are able to walk to each other’s houses on any casual evening. We pop over to see if this dress one of us has bought is worth keeping. We hop into each other’s cars to run errands. We water each other’s plants when we’re out of town, and most days we share at least one meal together. 

BTW,” a text will say “I have a pot of beans simmering for dinner if you want any.” 

We know each other’s strengths: Libby grills the chicken wings, Sherry makes the fudge, I simmer the soup and Ann Marie bakes the bread. Sue sews the aprons. We want for little. 

5 Sisters

But the sweetest to me is the opportunity to worship together, as we did when we were kids, singing the hymns of our youth side by side.

Last November, for my Christmas concerts, Ann Marie baked 160 loaves of bread in three days. We sell little care packages and give the money to the orphan children in Africa, whom we have come to love. Many young parentless children attend school all year long from the funds we raise. My audiences are the most caring, selfless people you will ever meet. They also know my sister’s bread. Worth every penny.

I also make bread, though its different from my sisters. Mine is artisan bread baked in heavy hot lidded pots, giving it a crunchy crust that crumbles when you bite into it. It’s not the same, but it’s not bad. We have it every Sunday with family dinner, always hot from the oven and most often sampled at the kitchen island while I’m cutting it, so hot that the butter sinks into its softness before it reaches the lips. My bread is earthy and crunchy and the crust looks like a rugged mountain range with dark brown peaks, made for Sunday evenings.

But my sister’s bread? It is lovely and dependably golden brown on top, mounded like the top of a coffin, perfectly suited to represent the death and resurrection of our Lord. It's made for Sunday mornings. 

Ann Marie is known for her bread. People compliment her over and over, with good reason. She will always reply: “Thank you. It’s my friend Connie’s recipe. And how lucky am I that I get to make bread for Jesus?”

I can almost hear the voice of my Lord, the words being interpreted in my mind as I press my jaws together in my humanness, giving myself to the broken bread, a symbol that we are broken before we are whole:

“Take, eat; this is my body.”

Should He not be delicious to us?

2024/38 FIXED

Fix your eyes on the four little dots in the middle of this picture. Sing a verse or two of Amazing Grace or Love One Another as you stare at them, or count to 100. Then close your eyes, tip your head back slightly and see what appears under your closed eyelids. Give yourself 20 seconds to find it in your dark.

Something in the way humans are designed empowers us when we focus. For good, and for bad, we are able to ignore a lot of peripheral distractions when we fix our focus. It works just as well in climbing a summit as it does aiming for our next addicted fix. 

The Apostle Peter, in the boat being pummeled by a storm, saw Jesus coming toward them right when he thought they were going down. The poor fear-worn and drenched apostles were relieved and amazed that their friend and teacher had not only come to rescue them, but he was actually walking on water. Curious, impetuous, limitless Peter went beyond being gratefully relieved and amazed. He wanted to know how it was done. He wanted to feel whatever force allowed a person to defy the laws of nature as we know them. He knew with an otherworldly assurance that if the Lord bid him to walk on water, then, by golly, he could walk on water.

And he did.

As long as his mind was fixed, he walked on water.

It was only when the waves whispered, “You cannot do this,” that he fell.

Distractions are not by nature evil. Sometimes they’re useful to keep us from fixating on harmful things. It takes a fair dose of divine guidance to know what is necessary. It takes the same source of guidance to know when fixating on something good rounds the bend and turns into something harmful. Shout out to the Holy Spirit!

At that point in the last moments of mortality, when Jesus called out to his Father, “why hast Thou forsaken me?”, was that the place where he was most able to identify with us in our vulnerability and imperfection? I wonder if the Comforter comes to us in increments, according to our eternal needs, like varying degrees of electrical current are fitting only for certain appliances in certain locations. I wonder if the Spirit ebbs and flows like the waves of the sea. Divine history tells us that there have been times of abundant Spirit in whole communities, and other times when the Spirit withdraws. Is that withdrawal part of the testing of our strength, like the tester I keep in the place where we store our batteries in the drawer in the garage? Maybe the Spirit is hovering just a little more apart from us right now, checking our reserves because something is coming and we need to be sure to be charged. I honestly don’t know.

But I do know this: I am broken. We’re all broken. We are broken but functional. Knowing that compels me to dig for hope. I need to be charged… and changed. The process will strengthen me like working out in the gym builds muscle, only I don’t like to work out, even if I should. Life is going to take me to the spiritual gym whether I want to go there or not. And my trainer? My personal trainer? I think I will recognize him when I see him face to face.

He’ll bid me come.

And I will focus.

And I will be fixed. 

2024/37 MARY, GET THE OIL

John 12: 1-10

“Mary, get the oil.”

I have imagined this phrase being whispered into her ear when Jesus greeted her. It’s only my imagination, but it evokes a feeling that seals me to my Lord. I’ve been a pretender my whole life and I don’t feel like it has warped me or put me in a state of harmful denial. I am also a learner, and what I’ve learned does not leave me without foundation.

Today is Silent Wednesday, the day in the Holy Week where not much is said in the scriptures about what Jesus did. One thing we know is he visited a house in Bethany, where Mary lived. And one thing we know is that when he visited there Mary sat with him. Her sister Martha made herself useful and was likely at the hot stove sweating under the heat of preparing food for fourteen hungry men. Blessed Martha. She gets a bad rap for being irritated with her sister for sitting with Jesus when there was so much else to be done. I remind myself to thank Martha, in my imaginary realm, for her loving efforts to nurture and nourish. 

Still, I can also hear Jesus teach Martha to let go of her busyness. 

Jesus knew what the others didn’t know. Martha and the others had likely been through this before… gathering and eating and resting in Bethany, her brother Lazarus eating beside Jesus. What they didn’t know was that this would be the last time.

But Mary… perhaps she knew.

“Mary, get the oil.”

Up on the shelf, set apart from the goods of daily living, was an alabaster jar of costly Spikenard oil. Most well-to-do houses had them, special oils saved for special occasions. These oils were like the hope chest of our grandmothers. Spikenard was specifically set apart for two occasions: for a bride to wear on her wedding day, and for treating a body before its burial. Jews did not embalm. The sweet and powerful fragrance of Spikenard, pressed from an aromatic flower in India, could mask the smell of decay. This oil was incredibly expensive and was always used sparingly.

Later that night,
after criticizing Mary for wasting expensive oil,
would sell his soul for a pittance.

I imagine the gentle, maybe even trembling voice of her lord whispering:

“Mary, get the oil.”

I imagine the pit in her stomach, the pounding of her heart. I imagine her turning from him, falling to her knees and weeping. I hear her whimper, “No, not yet.” 

I imagine they had discussed this before. Maybe she had even worn the oil before, on her own flesh. 

Mary reaches up in the sacred place, lifts the alabaster jar and blows the dust from the lid. She carries it hesitantly to her Lord. First one drop upon his head. Then more on his neck, his arms, his shoulders. A sacred initiation. Finally, at his feet, she impulsively empties the jar. The room is filled with fragrance. She prays the fragrance will linger.

Mary, like all good believing women of her faith, has covered her head. Only family would see her hair. Never in public. And so, she takes her long locks of hair and wipes the excess oil from the dripping feet of the one she loves. She takes the oil and claims it as her own, just as she claimed the Lord as her own. 

I imagine, days later, Mary lifts her hair up to her face, inhaling the fragrance of her love, as he is laid in the tomb. 

The next morning I imagine she takes the jar, with only a few drops remaining, to finish the task.

Some say Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are not the same Mary.

Some say they are.

I imagine only she would have that consecrated oil. Only she would be obligated to anoint after death. And only she would be at the tomb to see it was empty.

What we imagine in silence, on this day in the Holy Week when not much is given, involves quiet retrospective moments. Thoughts of wholly personal relationships. 

Our Savior loved his Mary’s. Birth to death to resurrection... Marys were there.

Mary getting the oil reminds me to claim him as my own, to be willing to pour upon him all that is precious and sacred to me, to freely give what I am prone to reserve in acknowledgment of his divinity. 

Lord, let your fragrance pour itself upon me.

 

2024/36 PACKING

 

Dave brought down four suitcases from the upstairs closet. He knows how things change. We are headed to New York today, to visit our Kate who lives upstate, then on to NYC to see our grandson Timo perform at Lincoln Center. Indeed, we have both already repacked our things into new bags. We start out small, cuz that’s our nature. Carry as little as possible when you’re travelling seems to be our mindset. But it will be Easter and Sherry and Libby are sending chocolate and we have to have our Jelly Bellyflops. And then, oh yeah, I’ll need a Sunday dress. And shoes. 

The way Dave and I pack is pretty last minute. More fastidious people plan what they will wear on their trip, and set out piles in preparation, so they might know ahead of time what size suitcase to use. We sort of load stuff in as we think of it. It would be different if we were going to Africa. But we are headed to our daughter’s house, where we already keep work clothes and Dave keeps a spare white shirt and tie. 

It’s good to know where you are going before you pack.

I sit here with my computer on my lap and look around our family room. So much stuff! Sentimental to the max. And I love it, I really do. I still pinch myself to think I get to live here. But I am struck this morning, as I pause from my packing to do my Lent writing, knowing what the day ahead requires, with the thought that I should start packing less on my journey Home. Home with a capital H. 

None of this stuff is going with me, I know. But in defense of it, the presence of it right now in my existence evokes parts of me I like. Well, most of the stuff evokes sweet feelings. Some of it I just don’t know what to do with, but that’s another issue. I know when I take that last journey, I won’t even need a carry-on. 

We travel light when we fly back Home.

But while I’m here I guess I should work on lightening the load, without trying to be someone I’m not. 

Then again, I thrill at being on the earth and all the physical treasures that speak the thought “This is me.” I don’t have a minimalist home, even though I think they are cool. I don’t have a minimalist home because there isn’t a minimalist me. I’m full of all sorts of random stuff, and pretty much all of it is sentimental. I guess that will have to be ok for now.

Back to packing.

2024/35 MY OWN PERSONAL GPS

Remember when GPS was not a thing? 

I still have a file on my computer with written directions to our house from various starting points. We used to have to send it to people all the time.

Remember when the jockey box in the car was full of maps?

Remember when we used the back of an envelope to write directions to a friend’s house?

We kept our brains well-oiled by reviewing directions then following them bit by bit, as much as we could remember, then pulling over to read another section about where to turn and when.

Then, lo and behold, they came out with those expensive Garmin positioning systems you could put in your car? 

Now we have GPS in our pockets. Our phones speak to us. Groovy cars that have less miles on them than mine have little steely tongued women telling us not only where to turn, but how many lights we will go through before we turn left. “Your destination is in 300 yards on your right.”

I get in my car and all I have to do is say,

“Hey Siri, take me to See’s Candies in Salt Lake City.” 

She not only responds promptly to confirm that I am going to Sees she passes no judgement on me for going there.

We are spoiled by GPS. We count on it to get us where we are going to the degree we get in our cars and head the general direction and casually ask our devices to take us somewhere, trusting without question that it will do what we have commanded it to do. It will even take us on the back roads if it sees traffic is bad. I venture to guess the average person under the age of 30 does not even know how to read a map and would feel bothered by someone giving detailed directions for how to get somewhere. We are so easily bothered by details, to the degree we won’t even pick up the phone to talk because we don’t allow the emotional space for small talk. I see this in myself, and I’m tiptoeing swiftly into old age already.

Apparently there are all sorts of positioning systems, using different types of communication. Sound waves, light waves, time…these are all factors. In the traditional Global Positioning System we all use (GPS) we depend on satellites beyond our sight and sound to decipher where we are in relation to where we want to go. We trust that where it tells us to go is where we want to go. Hooray for trustworthy GPS.

Then again, sci-fi horror tales are made of things like this gone awry.

I think my own personal GPS is probably my most cherished gift of all time.

You might have your own personal GPS, too, like mine. But the G doesn’t stand for Global.

It stands for God.

God’s Positioning System, aka the Holy Ghost, alias the Holy Spirit.

The longer I live, and the more I learn and experience, the more I realize I need this personal positioning system more than I need discipline or knowledge or luck. It’s God’s positioning system that tucks little love notes in my heart, and wordless whisperings of wisdom and direction to my brain. The other day it led my car straight to my daughter’s house because I felt she needed my touch. Just a hug. Yesterday it told me to soak pinto beans overnight because I’m leaving town and Ariel might need them while I’m gone. My GPS told me today to sit down and listen when a friend called and needed to talk. My GPS can give me hints on Sunday mornings, when I sit in church and my teeth crush the sacramental token, about where I stand with my God and myself. It reminds me that I need to drink more water and less Coke. Its on all the time! I just don’t notice it sometimes. Then I need it to get me out of trouble and give me directions to get back home. Siri is not going to assume to know where I want to go, and neither does my GPS. I have to pause and think about it and invite it to direct me. 

The Holy Ghost is part of that power trio, companions in every aspect of existence with God the Father and God the Son whom we call Christ.  I mean no sacrilege by talking about the Holy Ghost. I don’t know if it’s a he or she or them. I only know that he/she/they were willing to go without a body so they could do things bodies can’t do, like get into the crevices of my heart. 

There’s a little joke I know that goes like this:

A mother took her little son to the doctor. The doctor takes a tongue depressor and looks in the child’s mouth.

“I wonder if I’ll find Cookie Monster in here?” says the doctor.

She then taps the child’s knee to check reflexes.

“I wonder if Spiderman is hiding in your knee?”

Then the doctor puts her stethoscope to the boy’s heart and says, “I wonder if I can hear Mickey Mouse in there?”

The boy finally speaks up:

“No Silly, Jesus is in my heart! Mickey’s on my underpants.”

 

I’m thinking how it might be for me if I didn’t have Jesus in my heart. What if all I knew of Jesus is his history and his commandments? What if I never felt that zingy feeling I sometimes get when I hear something divine? What if I never understood why I get goosebumps when someone tells me a story that carries spiritual truth? How would I know? 

My own personal GPS has learned how I think, how I work, how I mourn and how I rejoice. It understands me, probably better than I logically understand myself. Its power source is divine. It kicks in sometimes when I am totally spent and have no energy to spare. Good thing I don’t power it myself!

Thank you, Lord, for giving directions on how to get home, the kind we used to find in maps, the kind that are printed on rice paper thin books of scripture. Thanks for that.

But my deepest thanks, God, goes to you for the power that was laid on my newly baptized head through authorized hands. You blessed me with an organic device that can read where I am in relation to where I want to go. It knows how fast I move and with how much fuel I have left, and is willing to guide but not force me to take one of the paths that will lead me Home. 

2024/34 MUDDY MIRACLES

 We live in the foothills of Farmington UT, a small city halfway between Salt Lake City and Ogden.  If you’re at all familiar with Farmington, you would know the power of the east winds that come whipping down through the canyon and out toward the Great Salt Lake. Just yesterday my husband Dave took the trailer full of tree limbs and trunk to the dump, finishing a three-day task of cleaning up a large tree felled by the east winds of last week. This place is used to the wind. The century old scrub oaks on our property stretch their branches out toward the lake as evidence.

When we first moved here, from Pennsylvania, we experienced intense east winds that left us without power for three days. I recall standing at the window in our house watching a full section of the neighbor’s fence swirl through the air like the Wizard of Oz. Not long after that an unseasonably hot Memorial Day weekend melted the snows in the mountains too quickly and we had flooding all over the valley. People were floating in canoes down State Street in Salt Lake City. Here in Farmington, we had a mudslide that completely buried three houses and partially covered others. Gratefully, no one was killed. I remember helping with the cleanup of that, pregnant with our daughter Kate. This was in 1983. That mudslide occurred in downtown Farmington, near the old rock chapel.

When Farmington was settled in 1847 it was untamed and fertile, a little space of workable land in the bottleneck between the Great Salt Lake to the west and the Wasatch Mountains to the east. A few families were sent here by Brigham Young. Tasked with creating a community, they worked together to build a livable space. Eventually they had a small town and a whole passel of kids who eventually became part of the first children’s Primary organization for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The community being comprised of religious pilgrims, they gathered faithfully to worship in various houses in the town or in other small public spaces. Yearning for a structure in which to worship, the townsfolk began to try to raise funds to build a chapel. It was slow going. Few people had any money to spare. In the end they did what any faith-driven people would do, they fasted and prayed. They prayed as individuals, as families, as a community of displaced saints. They prayed that they would find people with generous hearts, that they would be able to find work to help raise funds. They prayed for good crops so they could preserve and sell their goods to the masses in Salt Lake. They prayed for affordable materials to be made available.

What they got was a mighty storm with a wicked east wind that whipped their crops and flooded their fields.

From out of the storm there came a crack of thunder and a mighty rumble. A piece of the mountain ripped through the canyon. It rolled down through the crevice of earth, tearing trees and rocks as it went. It all came toppling head over heels down through the foothills till it came to rest near the center of the city. When the storm and winds had finally ceased, people emerged from their houses to assess the damage and begin cleanup. They looked at the pile of mud-covered rock and timber, likely overwhelmed with anticipatory exhaustion. Finally, someone saw it for what it was. 

“Look what we have! Stone and timber with which to build our church.”

So began the gathering of wagons and horses and ropes and chisels. That muddy gift sent down the hill to the feet of prayerful saints looked quite different than that for which they had prayed. And yet the sturdy timber and eternal rocks still, to this day, hold up that sacred old edifice in the heart of our hometown.

We gathered in that old rock church on a toasty August day to bid farewell to my beloved mother. Her casket rested in front of the large painted mural on the wall of the original chapel, where the first LDS Primary was organized. Those old rocks and timber spoke to us.  They whispered, in reverential tones, that the Lord is aware of us, that he responds to our most pivotal needs, and He does it in organic ways that others might not see as miraculous. In muddy stone and tumbled timber, and in the fleshy places of the heart, He gives to us exactly what we need. 

2024/33 FORTUITOUS FALLS

My daughter Sarah fell the other day. I wasn’t there and I don’t even recall what she said the circumstances were that preceded the fall. She runs every day, so falling should not be unexpected. Anyway, her hand took the brunt of her fall. She had fractured and torn ligaments on that same hand a few years ago. She’s spent many months of physical therapy to get it useful again. Now that same hand was literally stretched beyond its limits, again. She said she just sat there and cried. She’s a physician, an artist and a mom who uses her hands constantly. She had worked so hard and so consistently to get it useful again.

This morning she called me with some happy news. Apparently stretching that hand in this most recent fall must have done some cleaning up of old scarring. The doctor indicated that it appears the painful stretching of the ligaments had ripped away some scar tissue that had developed at the site of the old injury. That frustrating and painful fall, I guess, provided quick and powerful rapid cleanse, tearing the scar tissue from the site, like a Band-aid being ripped off. Whatever the cause, she has more mobility and less pain now than she has for a year. Go figure.

I am reminded, with gratitude, that sometimes what appears to be injury upon injury winds up being a blessing in the end. 

Sometimes.

And sometimes it takes a courageous “close your eyes and jump” to do things like remove long-stuck Band-aids: dive into a new project, take a new job or decide to move on in a relationship. Here’s to Heaven intervening when we don’t think we have the wherewithal to do hard things. And here’s to fortuitous falls when we don't even get the chance to decide.

2024/32 THE BIRTHDAY HAT

I knew a woman who, because of her religious beliefs, did not celebrate birthdays. I myself belong to what appears to be a somewhat quirky religious denomination, so I get it, but I’m sure glad we celebrate birthdays. They are a chance to let someone be set apart just for existing on this earth. Birthdays are beautiful because no one has to do anything to earn the right to be celebrated. That makes birthdays Godly to me.

At our house, back in the day, the birthday kid got breakfast in bed. There seemed to always be a large box of presents, each of them individually wrapped, mailed from Gramma Connors who lived back east. She sent massive doses of love in the shape of toys, books and art supplies. Every kid got presents, but the birthday kid got the most. This is who David’s mother was. Birthday kids did not get parties every year. I think we settled on every three years, maybe every other year, I really can’t recall. But I was consciously trying to help them learn not to expect a big “to do” every single year. It would make the reality of life feel like the end of the moving sidewalk when they hit adulthood and they were not the center of attention. The family always celebrated, of course, but a friends party was not a given and was not to be expected. There was almost always a home-made randomly decorated chocolate cake we lovingly refer to as “garbage cake.” Always an overly loud and ridiculously dragged out three-part-harmony version of Happy Birthday to You while the candles on the cake dripped onto the frosting. After someone turns twenty the number of candles on the cake becomes random. We kind of know by now who wants a soft middle piece and who wants a corner and who only wants ice cream. These little tidbits are the secret indicators that we truly understand each other after repeated interactions. 

If you're having a birthday at our house, you're gonna be handed a hat. Our clan has always had a birthday hat. Multiple hats for shared birthdays. When the kids were small it was a crown made of satin white with shiny silver trimming. Then there were those silly hats that had fabric candles sticking out of the top, like a cake. We’ve had berets. tiaras jester hats and lately cute vintage French clown hats. Your birthday gives you permission to feel loved without reservation. We all need to feel love without reservation.

 

 

For Kate’s birthday this last December we had a miniature party. Everything was teeny, except for the people. We had teeny treats and teeny cakes with tiny penguins in miniature party hats. We made mini gingerbread houses. All her gifts were miniature. Her nieces and nephew made mini birthday hats for all of us to wear.

This morning I looked over at our statue of Jesus, a wonderful original piece by our dear friend J. Kirk Richards. There was our Jesus, the central figure in our family, wearing the birthday hat. Someone in my crazy clan must have put it on him at Sunday dinner. 

I’m thinking, while it may not be the most reverential depiction of who Christ was, it is also not necessarily unfounded. He has been central in all we do. He has ridden the sorrowful waves of grief and depression throughout our lives. He has guided us through the unknown of personal conflict, as well as a very public pandemic. He hears my words of joy and gratitude as well as my frustrations and anger. So, I have no doubt he is also here with us when we sing out hearts out, using our diaphragms and fullest voices to celebrate each other individually. Hooray that you exist, we sing! And I imagine he would be singing along with us, his arms around us in the circle as we throw our heads back and sway to the beat.

I can’t help but think that, in some moment of lightness that is not irreverent but is also not heavy with grief, he is preparing to celebrate his own birth. He has had multiple births, like us. A birth of spirit. Then a birth of body. But the biggest one, the most recent one, the one that changed everything for all of us was the birth that conquered death. We all celebrate that one. 

Easter.

Happy re-birth day, Jesus!

(You are loved without reservation.)