Song of My Sister by Virginia Hughes

Mary carries me across the river.

Mary and Virginia

She carries me

home from church.

She is my third mother, 

on a team of three women,

made of Mother and my two older sisters.

Mary explains about boys

and changes that will come.

She knits scarves of many colors

to warm the cold winters when we move from the tropics to the bitter Midwest winters.

My bedroom is drab until she gives me curtains and matching bedspread in a pattern of bright blue ponds hopping with green, smiling frogs.

She teaches me how to clean house and babysit with thorough finesse; passing down odd jobs so I learn the dignity of work and earn money to buy elephant bell-bottomed jeans at the Bargain Center.

Wanting so desperately to be in love, during college, Mary wills her way into a young man’s heart and they wed. He welcomes her devotion, and then resents her. He does not love her as she longs. Their life twists into cords of strangling suffocation as the decades pass.

Mary carries me again helping plan my wedding as my adult life is just beginning.

Her husband goes into the night at odd hours, and her diaries clang with worry and jealousy over women she suspects he entertains. Her mind screams into the emptiness, why is he leaving? When will he return? She rocks their young sons to sleep. She finds love notes signed with flirting hearts and flowers in his closeted, tweed pockets.

Throughout her turmoil, Mary keeps an open house inviting us all for the holidays for years and years where we feast together enjoying warmth of family. The bubbling tension between her and her husband melds a crazy blend of beauty, delicious food, decorations, awkwardness and tears.

In this fertile soil where mostly misery grows between them, Mary begins to weave, sew and explore her own artful pursuits. Her home gleams with creative ingenuity. The air fills with aromatic recipes of tender roasts, and baked desserts as she plays the consummate host. She pushes her husband forward into many a juried art show, insisting he complete art projects that land him coveted art fellowships and national acclaim. She quietly frames his art, handling the business side of things, paying bills and collecting payments for his artwork.

Then comes news that Mary has terrible lung cancer. It is so advanced that surgery will not help her. Her husband dotes on her, willing her to live. He begs forgiveness, and clears the space between them. They suddenly become the fantastic, golden couple she always knew they could be.  He is all hers those last few weeks.

Where oh death is thy sting?

Inflamed in the deathbed of my beloved sister.

Even knowing her death is swallowed up in victory, I struggle on this side of heaven.

Why her?

Death looks for blame.

Why does she hide the shadow on her lung detected two years earlier?

She knows; for a long time, she knows. Why does she give up so soon? Is it soon though? She has been miserable and eaten up for years.

Why does this husband pay attention now so very late?  

He breaks, and we are there for him. Maybe not so much for him anymore as for our dear grown nephews standing in military dress blues drowning in waves of tears as they memorialize their mother.

I do not want a heart of stone. It takes more than resistance to make that a reality. Paper covers rock in the game, “Rock, paper, scissors.” I need God’s blanket of grace to cover me completely lest I harden.

Soon after Mary’s death, our brother-in-law is engaged, and in a blink, the newlyweds stand declaring their undying love in the same church; on the same spot by the altar where my sister’s casket rested, and my brother-in-law draped himself weeping, one year before.

I struggle to forgive when I would rather forget. I don’t want a root of bitterness to grow in my fragile, mourning heart. I go numb. What is a root of numbness compared to one of bitterness? It may indeed be worse. After the wedding, I avoid, avoid, avoid. I don’t want to see him happily getting on with life. I miss my sister. Why did she die and now he’s so happy with this other woman? The smiling faces of congratulations clash in cacophony. Thankfully, we don’t live in the same town or state. Our paths needn’t cross. But family ties pull us together.

I’m planning a family gathering and I leave my brother-in-law and his new wife off the list.

It is for my sister. Is it? What would she want me to do to honor her memory? She and he reconciled and had their best few weeks right before she died. She forgave.

I read about doing unto others, and how I am to forgive others as God has forgiven me. I cannot imagine a life where I exist feeling unforgiven by God. I need forgiveness like water, air, and the God particle that holds my flesh together may well be his spirit of forgiveness. I think of Corrie ten Boom and the families of Christian martyrs, and scores of others who have forgiven much greater wrongs.

It is a small gesture, but I invite my brother-in-law and his wife to the family gathering. 

Forgive me my debts as I forgive my debtors

As Mary carries me across the river.

Virginia and her siblings

Shaping Sacred Space by Rachel Rim

A few days ago, while skimming through old files on my laptop, I came across one simply titled with the name of a friend. Opening it, I realized it was a powerpoint I’d created several years ago in an effort to more intentionally pray for this non-Christian friend. Some sections had prayers written on a nearly daily basis, other sections skipped weeks between prayers, but by the time the powerpoint fully loaded, there were more than a hundred slides of prayers spanning the last four years.

God has yet to answer any of these prayers. He has yet to answer many people’s prayers—the ones for sick loved ones, wayward children, unfulfilling vocations—and it only takes a cursory glance at the news to see he has yet to answer all (or even most) of our prayers for our nation or for peace abroad. Sometimes the silence of God in the face of our pleading is more than we can take; there’s a reason my powerpoint has long gaps in between. There is a peculiar and powerful kind of grief to praying for something over and over and over again with no measurable answer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about hospitality after finding that powerpoint. It’s one of those words we’ve managed to sterilize, and what is left intact is a mildly pleasant and generally risk-free image of inviting someone over for dinner. While there’s nothing wrong with cooking dinner for someone—a shared meal can be a powerful avenue through which true hospitality might occur—I think it’s far from encapsulating the actual meaning of the word. The Greek etymon for hospitality is xenia, and if you’ve read any Homer, you know that welcoming the stranger formed a vital part of ancient Greek culture. The epics are wrought with instances of hospitality, usually involving kings welcoming disguised characters into their homes for refreshment, storytelling and song.

I think there’s something profound about this inclusion of storytelling and song—it shows that hospitality is not simply offering physical nourishment but allowing someone to bring their stranger-ness to the table, so to speak, and partake in it with them. That’s what I understand hospitality to be: the host creating a space in which the guest enters in and the two then radically engage in intentional communion—giving and receiving, speaking and listening, self and other. The goal is not domination nor assimilation but generous participation. Henri Nouwen says it like this in his book Reaching Out:

Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion . . . But still—that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.

I’m beginning to think of prayer—the words themselves—as an act of hospitality. Each of those hundred slides on my computer is not simply a petition to God but an intentional space where the fullness of who I am can meet the fullness of my friend—even if I am meeting her in her absence. It is my attempt to play the host, offering words that close the physical distance between us, that hospitalize the wounds caused by our fragile humanness, that tenderize the sometimes polarizing rhetoric (“non-Christian,” “unbeliever”), and leaves us as simply human. It’s creating openness to remind myself of who God is and who God knows my friend to be, and of all he has done and can do with the emptiness we lay before him.

In a Madeline L’Engle book, a daughter asks her mother why she prays if praying doesn’t always produce results. Her mom answers that we pray because prayer is an act of love. I don’t know if my friend will ever accept the gospel. I don’t know if any of your prayers will have the outcomes you hope for. I hope she does, and I hope they do. I ache with the hope of it. But I am reminded today that perhaps prayer is more about its shape than its results, more about what it gives than what it asks. If prayer is an invitation into a sacred and creative space, toward hospitalizing the stranger, whether that be a beloved person or a turbulent nation, then surely it is worth praying anyway. God knows we could use more acts of love.

Christmas in June by Wil Triggs

On a boat toward Lesvos she lies

In wait for new world’s sky blue prize.

This family flees like Egypt of old

To life and death and new world gold

All in orange life jacket guise

The aged, the young; they dip and rise

To the manger island the boat plies

For generations to come this story will be told

Of the boat toward Lesvos where she lies

Let it be done, submissive, she sighs

Her prayer, like ours, faith’s surprise

As goods and lives, bartered and sold,

There’s no room in the inn, the tents unfold;

Herods and Judas debate, yet onward flies

The boat toward Lesvos where Mary lies.

Moonlight Lilies

Art by Young Artist Nathanael Williams (age 10)

A Familiar Tune by Heather

Heather is a worker in a hard-to-reach place.

Last Sunday night the four of us went to see our friend’s daughter perform at a violin concert. Her teacher, who performs with the Hanoi Symphony Orchestra, hosted the event for his students. He introduced each one adding a few words of praise and encouragement.

When the first-year violins screeched on a high note or faltered over a forgotten measure, the teacher was the first to applaud them at the end. One of the students, a seven-year-old, tripped over a few difficult notes and froze in the middle of her piece. Without hesitating, the instructor picked up his own violin and began playing from where she left off. The student followed his lead until he lowered his violin, and she finished the piece on her own.

I’ve been thinking about that moment all afternoon.

Sometimes when we sit down to pen these letters, we feel a pressure to communicate how well we have performed our work. Our minds and hearts are always drawn toward a subtle idolatry of self. We turn life and ministry into a performance, and put ourselves in the spotlight. I was convicted of this as I stared at the blank text box anxiously wondering what to write.

I didn’t want to admit that I’ve been tired these past few months. I took on too many responsibilities this year and have scrambled to keep my commitments. I’m dragging to the end of this school year just glad to finish and trying not to worry whether I’ve finished well. I feel like the poor first-year violin student who stumbled and stalled and needed her teacher.

Thankfully, we do have a gentle teacher who is watchful and who knows exactly how the music should be played. When we make mistakes and lose track of the melody, he leads us forward by playing the familiar but momentarily forgotten tune.

I’ve been reading First and Second Corinthians in recent weeks and came across this today, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). The violin student’s flawed performance unexpectedly revealed her teacher’s kindness and skill.

In the same way, our failures are sometimes the crack through which the blinding light of God’s grace and goodness and perfection shine. In 2 Corinthians, Paul continues, “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

While it seems odd to send newsletters about our insufficiency, I will do so with Paul in hopes that you can hear the sweet, familiar tune of the gospel and catch a glimpse of the One who plays it perfectly. May we be reminded together that the grace of God is sufficient when our own strength fails and that the glory of Christ is revealed in our weakness.

Mistaken Identity by Lorraine Triggs

"You look Russian," our missionary friend Cindy assured me as we climbed up the stairs from a Metro station near Red Square. "Just don't smile." It was 1993—still the early years of the fall of communism—and we were headed to two different protest rallies on opposite sides of Red Square. We had heard news about the two events on the same day that Russia's Parliament was trying to remove the president and go back to the way things were.

One was a pro-communist rally; the other a pro-democracy rally. All this on my first trip to Moscow. For someone who apsired in some ways to journalism, this was a dream come true. Some missionaries were afraid and were staying huddled in their apartments. We, perhaps stupidly, wanted to run right to the rallies where the news was, where history was happening.

Okay, I look Russian and I won't smile, I told myself as we arrived at the pro-communist rally first. I thought about the woman on the tram earlier in our trip who started talking to me in Russian. As long as I stayed mute, I could be mistaken for a Russian citizen.

The first rally was eerily silent. Protestors were mainly pensioners in dark winter coats and Russian hats. No one talked or milled about. The red and gold hammer and sickle flag was carried by more than one protestor. Men wore military medals on their coats. There weren't thousands of people, but they were all standing as if in formation, facing a lone man who was shouting his anti-deomcracry speech through a portable speaker.

We walked behind the protestors without a word, on our way to the other rally. We reached a street where we saw a row of Russian soldiers on horseback, Moscow police, police cars and whole bank of ambulances. They were primed for violence.

"Oh, look," Cindy said, "Lorraine's jacket is the exact color of the new Russian flag." The blue color was not welcome in this all-red rally where people were angry and longing for a return to the past. And Cindy was right--the blue of my jacket was the exact shade of blue on the new flag.

So would those people think I was Russian, but the wrong kind of Russian?

Thank you very much, Cindy. I just wanted to get safely by the pro-Soviet soldiers and the armed police. Why do you think I wasn't smiling or talking. Fine with me if you mistake me for a Russian citizen and not an American.

We crossed Red Square, quiet and pensive. When we finally reached the pro-democracy rally, nothing could have been more different. For starters, the crowd was huge and milled about, talking and laughing. No people in formation or angry speeches screamed. There were children with their parents, students and all people of all ages. Ice cream vendors were selling ice cream. Street musicians were playing music. Jugglers. It was like a carnival. I breathed a sigh of relief that I could smile and talk again, and shake off my mistaken identity.

I felt free to be myself.

And I think in some ways, the same feeling was true at that time for a lot of other people coming out of the spell of the Soviet Union. They weren't Communists anymore. They weren't Soviet. Some could whisper a confession of identity, like the dear friend who travelled with us and whispered that her mother was a Jew, something she could not openly admit for years. I hugged her because we shared that same heritage with our mothers. Finally, she could admit who she was. But more important than that bond was the most important bond: we were both followers of Jesus Christ.

It's a little bittersweet to look back at this point with all that's happening with Russia and Ukraine and America and the rest of the world.

The danger with mistaken identities is believing that they are the real deal. We can even fall for it ourselves. We can define ourselves by our politics, the bloggers we follow or don't follow, our successes or failures. It's so easy to let those little bits define us—our genetics, our politics, our careers, skin color, gender, academic studies, bank accounts, the cars we drive; there are so many ways for us to create mistaken identities. Those things are not who we really are. 

Think about the Apostle Peter on what was probably the worse night of his life—his denial of Jesus. Try as he might, there was no mistaken identity for Peter as he huddled around the fire. A servant girl and two other people knew that Peter had been with Jesus. 

Being with Jesus is what defined Peter, even at his lowest point, even when, scared, he denied it. And it is what needs to define us as children of God at our lowest or highest points. Let's work at letting people see us for who we really are, and let's be who we are—children of the living God, which is the very best identity that any of us could aspire to.

Lavish Waste by Wil Triggs

That God doesn’t waste things seems fairly obvious, but there are a lot of different places that the human mind can go with this. I have sometimes felt like that perspective puts God into a miserly, pre-ghost-visit Ebeneezer Scrooge. Thinking devotionally, this is not helpful for me. I do not aspire to be that and when I think of God as my father, it doesn’t seem like a helpful image.

Yes, the leftover baskets of bread and fish were given to the poor—but the lavish part of the miracle was that there were leftovers.

So perhaps there are other associations to consider when thinking about God as not wasteful.

A few years back, when I was a missionary with Russian Ministries (now Mission Eurasia), one of my associates (Elaine) and Lorraine and I all got into worm composting, or vermicomposting. I drilled holes in the sides and bottom of a lidded plastic bin. Next step in making the home for worms to live, eat and propogate is to put bedding in. Lorraine and I chose coconut husk mulch; Elaine shredded newspaper. Both mediums needed to be moist.

Then you add worms and bury them. You can order them online or get some from a fellow vermicomposter if you can find one. You don’t really need to bury them much because they will make their way on their own.

Then you just put your non-meat-scrap garbage in, cover it with a bit of the medium and wait. Every day you can add more garbage, cover it with a bit of the medium. I think it becomes a kind of oasis for these worms. Fresh garbage every day—egg shells, banana peels, coffee grounds, grapefruit halves after the fruit is scooped out. I like to think of it as a sort of tropical resort or a cruise ship for worms—all they have to do is eat, reproduce and make the castings, which become the nutrient-rich mulch.

The hardest thing to believe, and even now as I type this I know people will think it’s not true, is that there is no bad smell to this. There really is no garbage smell.

After a few weeks, we would take our bin outside into the sunlight and open the lid. Worms squirm their way to the bottom to get away from the light and you can start to take out the mulch. We had a little pail and got a good amount of the castings. I remember pulling out what looked like a piece of lace one time and realizing that it had once been a cantaloupe rind. When we got to the bottom and there were mostly worms with just a little castings left, we would add a fresh batch of coconut mulch, put the lid back on and start the process all over.

We would put the fresh black mulch at the base of our vegetable plants. Some people make a tea from the castings or pour it on the plants to feed and water them at once. The plants seemed to thrive with this feeding. The food would grow and when we picked it and ate it, the onion tops, tomato stems and other bits would go back into the worm bin.

There is a lot of creativity in not wasting—at least, in God’s style of not wasting—maybe more like a performance artist of the universe than a Dickensian Scrooge figure. When God spoke, the “without form and void” earth began to take on order—light from darkness, waters under the expanse and waters above it, dry land and sea, and the earth, the earth full of vegetation, plants and trees. And a couple of creation days later, I like to think that worms began their composting work.

All this lavish creation waiting and ready for us, created in God’s image, made a little lower than the heavenly beings and fallen short of the glory of God.

So, here’s to the real Ebeneezer and the God above all others, who isn’t stingy with his fallen creatures in desperate need of his grace and help.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the LORD has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12)

Note: apologies to Pat, who, based on her latest journal entry, Bugged, has a hard time with spiders, bug, and surely worms.

Bugged by Pat Cirricione

I absolutely do not like gardening. I have tried to like it many times throughout various stages of my life. If my father were still alive he would regale you with stories of how gardening and I do not get along with one another. The few times he asked me to help him plant tomatoes, I was always so excited and eager to help. But the minute a spider or an earthworm  crossed into the path of the beautiful dark soil in which I was digging, I would fling the garden hoe into the air and run, screaming into the house.

Bugs just give me the creeps. They creep, they crawl, they fly, they bite. A bee flying around me would send me into fits of hysteria (not a pretty sight).

On the other hand, my sister loves to garden. She has turned her back yard into a beautiful English garden. There are birds houses in various trees, wisteria,  lavender--beautiful paths to walk on, with benches to sit on under beautiful trees. I used to just love to look out of the window of her kitchen into that beautiful garden. I even tried sitting on one of the benches once, until I was attacked by a bee that would not leave me alone.

My husband loves to garden, and I enjoy eating all of the things that he eventually harvests; however, about the only time I go out to look about, and admire the work he has done, is when he asks me to bring him a glass of cold water.

Insects seem to love me. Cookouts are enjoyed by the rest of the family, while I eat my food inside. If I eat outside I am immediately surrounded by gnats, bees and mosquitoes. While some are trying to enjoy my food, others are trying to enjoy my blood. A picnic has ants that crawl up my arms and legs. I wish I could enjoy them, maybe even give them pet names, but no, I get hysterical as I try to brush them off, away, onto someone else (not meaning to do so, it’s just that when my arms go flying there’s no telling where they might land).

So how a snake could ever have convinced Eve to take a bite of an apple is just incomprehensible to me. One look at that snake, and a talking one no less, would have sent me screaming into Adam’s arms, panting and puffing and pointing at something so hideous!

Yes, I do love gardens, and I admire those who garden. They are so nonchalant about just moving those pesky, creepy, crawly things out of their way while going about planting. As for me, I will stick to house plants.

Although even then I have been known to fling the potted bag soil into the kitchen's stratosphere if a spider nonchalantly walksout of the bag'

I mean, really, how did that get in there!