The Hoover and his Lady

 A cedar waxwing, the presence of which will become apparent as you read.

I have a dear friend in prison in the deep South, who has given me permission to post anything he writes in his letters. This blog seems the appropriate place, what with everything Jesus said about visiting people in prison and what with so many American Christians ignoring Jesus' insistence on love because they're having too much fun hating homosexuals, to put this letter from him.

March 14, 2010:

Here in That Grey Area Between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead, . . .

I was nose to nose with a skunk the other night.

I've been smuggling cornbread, which I rarely eat anyhow, from the chow hall and scattering it for the birds outside by the windows that run alongside my bed. (Feel free to pick and choose how to better arrange the prepositional phrases in that sentence.)  It'd be nice to have been able to offer the birds something better (more birdseedy), but here in TGABLLLD, there you have it.  [Note:  I don't know what those letters stand for either.]

Most of my visitors are sparrow-y types that look like nothing so much as chipmunks with wings.  But I was graced with the appearance of a few yellow warblers, which have green hoods and backs and a big splash of bright vivid yellow on their chests.  From up close, the sight of them really lifts a man's spirits.
A fat and gorgeous fox squirrel has made a few appearances.  When he sits up to eat, in that charmingly prayerful stance, the sight of his strawberry blonde underside makes me swoon.

I commend his bravery -- he has to cross a fairly large open expanse to reach the rear of the dorm from the edge of the woods across the road, and I am certain Mr. and Mrs. Hawk (sidenote: they're always circling o'erhead and screaming, and such) would take a keen and fatal interest in his traverse.

Alas, the cornbread would be all gone (I would look out and say "All gone! - like you do to a baby) in the morning, and it was easy to surmise that Mr. Skunk was the responsible party.

Finally, I was awake and watching when he came around to hoover up all the cornbread.  I was leaning over the side of my bunk observing his curious culinary preference for cornbread rapidly rolled in dirt ("dirt-breaded") over plain cornbread.  He stopped what he was doing and came right up to the window, fearlessly meeting my gaze with his small shiny black eyes.

Mr. Skunk is now known as The Hoover, and his girlfriend, whom he brought to the pary last night, is Lady Hoover.

And I might as well go the whole hog, nature-talk-wise and reveal that I have now observed the cedar waxwing (I NEVER draw 'waxwing' in Scrabble), who really seems to have been designed by the Divine Artist strictly for our viewing pleasure.  It's a buff-colored bird EXCEPT they have a little bit of bright red and bright white -- just a touch, mind you --on the edge of the wing, and at the end of their fan tail is a stripe of brilliant yellow.

[Editorial note:  This is the moment when you return to the photo at the top of the page. If you make it big enough and squint, you can see both the spots of red and the brillliant yellow on the tail.]

Sigh.  Sigh.

I can usually avoid abyssal unhappiness . . .

Aw, Mary Jo, you know what I mean -- I can often overcome my circumscribed circumstances and insistently focus upon my many blessings -- including the sight of the cedar waxwing.  It's just that sometimes, and some days . . .

*********

Back to me. I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few days ago (the diagnostics began at the same time my father was dying).  While on the whole I'm chipper enough to make people vomit, I'm having a frog-all kind of day today; so I'm in tune with Jack. All of my blessings, including spotting a ground hog day before yesterday and the sight of nine turtles sun-bathing on the banks of Beargrass Creek yesterday, not to mention health insurance, and yet it's just that sometimes, and some days . . .

Streep and Sehested

" 'I remember Albert Brooks saying to me in Defending Your Life, "Could you just make it a little sweeter?" - and that's been repeated by other people in the years since then.' This time her derisive snort is much louder.  'But I didn't listen to it.'
"So how did she free herself? 'I don't think it's something anyone can tell you,' Streep says. 'I think you just have to get sick of hearing the accommodation in your approach to things . . . the way people have to get sick of drinking or drugs before they stop. As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for anyone else.'"
               Meryl Streep cited in "Something about Meryl" by Leslie Bennetts in January 2010 Vanity Fair.

"I am a prison chaplain in a maximum security prison for men.  . . . Prison is a place fueled by fear. The place runs on power generated by cruelty and shame. It is shredding to the soul. . . .
I have a prayer, a daily hope.  My  prayer is that I can stand at the receiving dock at the prison as the new arrivals come in.  In my vision, I say: 'Brothers, the violence and abuse that has been done to you, or that you did to yourself or to someone else . . . it ends here.  Here you will practice compassion, dignity, and respect for yourself and others.  Here you will have the possibility to to change because God is here.  Welcome.  Come on in.'. . .
I have the same prayer and hope for the church . . . that the violence and abuse stops, and that we practice dignity and respect for all human beings."
     Baptist preacher and storyteller  Nancy Hastings Sehested, in "Passionate about the Possible," Christian Feminism Today, Vol. 30, No. 2, Summer (July - September), 2006.

Woohoo! Got the grant! Oh, dear.

Yesterday I got an envelope from the Kentucky Foundation for Women saying I'm a recipient of an economic hardship grant that will fund my mailing an original collage and document to leadership in the United Methodist Church to stimulate conversation about the church's attitude toward homosexuality and women leaders. These funds, from an anonymous donor, are micro-grants. The maximum each person could request was $500.  My request was for $258.

The KFW letter goes on to say that 48 feminist social change artists requested funds; 24 were funded. The requests "bear powerful witness to the impact of the national recession on the feminist artist community in our state" and also "bear witness to the great strength, ingenuity and persistence that KFW grantees are demonstrating in seeking solutions to their financial hardships."  A check for $258 was enclosed.

I was totally happy until this morning when I re-read my grant proposal, in which I say I'M GOING TO CUT UP MY PREACHING ROBE and use it to make the collages. Good God, people.  What was I thinking? Why didn't you stop me?

It's the theological equivalent of flag-burning.  Let's be clear. I approve of flag burning as political statement, as performance art, as a way of knocking us out of the doldrums of familiarity, as free speech.  And if somebody else had told me she/he planned to chop up a preaching robe -- well, cool.  Free speech. Performance art. Political statement.  Let's get those fools to open their eyes that they may see glimpses of truth.  Right on, my sisters and brothers.

Right on, indeed. But it's my preaching robe. MY preaching robe.  My PREACHING robe. Embedded in its warp and woof is every day of my life from 1995 to 1998, when all was well with the world (or at least with Fred, my late husband); and when the congregation, God, and I danced -- a waltz, a tango, a Fox trot, the twist, the funky chicken, the swim -- on Sunday mornings.  I wore the robe when I performed my first baptisms (Bradley and Devin, two of my grandsons).  I wore the robe when I performed my final baptism (Seth, the baby my friend Lisa was pregnant with when she preached Fred's funeral).  The robe hung in my closet in South Carolina, and I brought it with me to Kentucky, and here I stuffed it into a sack and later I set the sack on a shelf in the garage.  I brought it back to the house after I wrote the grant proposal, and now the ratty old sack sits on a shelf in the laundry alcove.

I'm going to chop it up; I really am. And I'm going to make fiber collages of it and mail them to United Methodist leaders along with a statement, and I'm going to post that statement here, and I'm going to e-mail it to newspapers and magazines. But not quite yet.  Soon, but not quite yet. I want to hold on just a little longer to my preaching robe and to what it used to represent:  my life; my local church; a kind, open-hearted, open-minded, open-doored denomination.