Dropping Another Stone

Yesterday was a successful day.  I successfully avoided the two things I was suppose to do: exercising and writing.  Instead, I watched the movie, He Named Me Malala.  It's the story of the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, who openly defied the Taliban's policy against educating girls.  They shot her in the head.  She almost died. 

For most of my life, I've admired Martin Luther King, a man who did die for what he believed in.  As a Christian, I follow one who suffered an agonizing death because he could not stop challenging injustice and living a life which proclaimed, in word and deed, the inestimable value of those whom society  tried its best to pretend did not exist, or at the very least did not matter.  That same man declared that the greatest love any person could have was to lay down one's  life for one's friend.  He was very clear that everyone was God's, and therefore his, friend.  So if I follow Christ, I'm suppose to be willing to die for what I believe in; for any and all of God's children.  Just how willing am I ?

What is it that makes someone able to die for what they believe in?  What is it that made Martin Luther King able to march through Montgomery, through Birmingham, through Memphis, knowing only too well that those steps could cost him his life?  God?  But his God is my God.  God is just as present with me as God was with Martin Luther King, and. . .King lived the life of an early to mid-twentieth century Black man.  In far too many ways, it was a brutal, dehumanizing life.  King also had the opportunity to think deeply about the meaning and cost of discipleship.  If those realities to some degree explain a man's willingness to face death, what on earth explains the willingness of a child, of a teenager, of Malala?  Is whatever explains that in me?
 
How willing am I to lay down my life?  Not very.  Do I have what Malala has?  No.  Years ago, I participated with a disability rights group in a protest.  My biggest worry was that I would get arrested, so I did my best to make damn sure I didn't.  When a friend who was willing to get arrested asked me to guard the door he was blocking while he went to the restroom, I did as he asked, but I was scared to death.  If it was that hard for me to risk arrest, I doubt I would risk my life.  And that's the problem with admiring Martin Luther King and Malala, let alone with trying to live as a disciple of Christ: I often feel like I failed.

Martin Luther King led a bus boycott when he was twenty-five.  When I was twenty-five, I graduated from college.  It pales by comparison.  And although I know the comparison is unfair, I still do it .   Every time I do it I wonder, What have I done with my life?  When I was Malala's age, I was an American teenager absorbed in adolescent angst.  It would never have occurred to me to risk a huge sacrifice for the sake of other people.  Is that ok?  If I admire and try to follow extraordinary people, is it ok that I am in so many ways ordinary?

Today was also a successful day, more or less.  I successfully avoided exercising again, and almost avoided writing.  This time my method of avoidance was Carrie Newcomer.  A folk singer grounded in a deep and rich sense of the sacred, she sang the Word of God to me--Not out of the Bible, but out of ordinary life:

So today I'll drop stones into the river,
And the current takes them out into forever,
And the truth is,
Most of us will never know
Where our best intentions go.
Still I'll drop another stone.
 
I'm not Martin or Malala.  I'm Mary.  I write blog entries and do a Bible study for ordinary people I love and care about who love and care about me. I know some people who read what I post, and each of the four or five people who sit with me and ponder questions about God and life every Monday.  But the truth is, in a very real sense, I have no idea where my best intentions go--how they mix and mesh --or don't mix and mesh--with what's inside you.  I can't determine outcomes or entirely control their impact.  All I can do is drop stones into the river. . .

So I'm dropping another stone.

Mangers, Christmas Parties, and the Energy of God

We had our Christmas party last week--"We" being the residents and staff who live and work in the place I call home.  I am not much for parties.  Introvert that I am, I prefer being alone.  But my power chair had been broken for six weeks (I would have written about that, but it was basically  a repeat of the "My chair needs a new battery" post I wrote not long enough ago, and "ditto" doesn't count as writing). Life in my manual chair was less than fun. Even I was tired of sitting in my apartment.  I went to the party.

Someone had hired a band for the occasion--a perfectly decent band I suppose, but in a space as small as our dining hall, their amplifiers and mics turned the music into a wall of sound--a wall I felt like I had just crashed into. Conversation was impossible.  A friend pushed me to a table.  It was sprinkled with candy--Hershey's kisses, mints, chocolate Santas.   Miraculously, I didn't want any.  The band played; I twiddled my thumbs, literally. I'll stay for thirty minutes, I promised no one in particular.  Then I looked up, and saw Sasha.

She was dancing.  I mean really dancing.  She moved like Elvis.  I swear each hip wiggled independently.  I stared at her.  I broke into a smile.  I think I actually laughed. Almost involuntarily, my hand began to tap on the arm of my chair. I was keeping time with the music, which had apparently stopped being a wall.  Speaking of Elvis, Santa could dance too!  The head of our maintenance department, whose name really is Elvis, was Santa this year, and he and Sasha made quite a pair!  I looked around the room.  People got out of their chairs and joined the dance. Our executive director was taking pictures.  She and the rest of the staff were laughing with each other, and with us.  This was worth coming for, I thought, and this is God.

The pure, unadulterated joy; the energy that moved through the room, that moved my hand to tap and my lips into a smile--that is the God my religion sings of, who delights in surprising us, who loves to show up in unexpected places, like mangers and dining halls, and even grumpy people who don't like parties.  In life's best moments, that God fills us to the brim with his--or her--exuberance, extravagance, and generosity, which then spills out as loud music, joyous dancing, and occasionally, a run-on sentence or two!

May your new year and mine be filled with that God.

Thanks John

A few weeks ago, my friend Lisa started a song circle in the building where I live.  Among many other favorites, we sang a John Denver song.  I mentioned that another song of his inspired the name for my old power chair, and that I had written the story of that naming. Since people seemed curious, I'm posting it here.  Happy reading, and thanks John!

                                                     Aye Calypso

          “You need to make friends with your wheelchair,” said Rob.  “It doesn’t limit your freedom.  It gives you the freedom to move.”  Large and bearded, Rob was the pipe smoking, guitar playing chaplain at the university where I was now a sophomore.  As usual he challenged my assumptions, and as usual, I heard him even though I didn’t want to.  A few months later, a rite of passage ideally suited for a 21-year-old student with a disability threw itself across my path:  the need for a new wheelchair.  For the first time in my life, I, not my mother, would tell the vendor what kind of chair I needed.

          “It needs to be low to the ground,” I told him, “because I’m short.  And I want blue upholstery.”  I had no idea why.  For weeks I anticipated its arrival.  At some point, I gave it a name.  When the chair finally came, I sent out birth announcements:

          “BABY BLUE BUGGY HAS ARRIVED!”  And so began my first friendship with a chair.

          Fast forward a number of years.  I’m the chaplain now, working in a large urban medical center where I ride around on an aging three wheeled power scooter that breaks down every other day.  The students and staff in my department listen as I rant and swear through each new ordeal, and haggle with my insurance company over what portion of the cost of a new scooter they will cover.  The basic model won’t do.  I need something built to endure.  I tell my colleagues that will be its name:  Blessed Endurance.  The morning after it arrives, I emerge from our elevator looking like a queen on her throne.  Everyone gathers in a circle around me and starts to sing a song they have written in honor of the occasion:

         

          Blessed Endurance, 

          This scooter is mine;

         O what a joy

          Now I look so fine!

          Racing through hallways

          We turn on a dime;

          Look out O world

          It’s my time to shine!

 

          Blessed Endurance lived up to her name.  She served me for almost a decade, until surgery drastically reduced my upper body stability, and I needed a power chair, not scooter. What would its name be? I wondered.

          In the darkness of a winter’s night, I sat in my apartment listening to John Denver sing on the radio:

Aye Calypso!

The places you’ve been to,

The things that you’ve shown us,

The stories you tell.

 

Aye Calypso!

I sing to your spirit,

The men who have served you so long and so well.

 

Calypso—The ship on which Jacques Cousteau went adventuring across the ocean. . .  Calypso—A chair in which to go adventuring across my world. . .   Calypso was my new chair’s name!

          It’s been almost nine years since she came into my life.  We’ve careened down hallways, peeled rubber around corners, and yelled, “W-E-E-E-DLE!” as we raced in sheer joy.  Her paint is chipped.  Her arm pads are worn.  Her joystick has tape around it.  Like the woman she holds, she has soul.  And I have to say good-bye to her.  In a few days, I’m getting a new chair. . . And I don’t know its name.  And a chair without a name is a collection of steel and rubber; not a companion for the journey.  And in this year I’ve had to part with so much that was part of my soul that sometimes I wonder if my soul still matters.  Everything seems about what’s practical.  I’m grieving this parting like no chair I’ve ever said good-bye to, even as I know this is part of life, and I do need a new chair.  Please God, tell me her name.

          Tonight in a new apartment, in a place I did not choose, I listen again to John Denver sing.  In tribute to my companion, I change the words:

 

Aye Calypso,

The places we’ve been to,

The things that you’ve shown me,

The stories I’ll tell.

 

Aye Calypso,

I sing to your spirit,

The ways you have served me so long and so well.

 

 

--Mary Stainton

 

Remembering Again

It's been two years.  Sometimes it feels like forever ago; sometimes just yesterday.  The best memories I have are of her laughing.  We all inherited her sense of humor, though my brother got the most concentrated dose of that gene.  The picture above was taken at the Lancaster County Art Association, where she gave so much of her time and talent.

Speaking of that talent. . .

"I wish you could take a special trip," she said to me wistfully.   She and my father loved to travel.  My sister got the double dose of that gene.

"The only place I really want to go is New Mexico," I told her.  She had lived there for just a year in her twenties, but the way she talked about it made it seem like decades.  A jar of dirt from that year sat on our kitchen table.  It had been there for as long as I could remember.  I wanted to experience a land which had that kind of impact, so in 1994 she and my father took me to New Mexico.  In their seventies by then, they pushed me in my wheelchair through the rocks and dirt of that hardly accessible terrain.  I saw pueblos and petroglyphs, and breathtaking views like the one Mom painted in this picture.  I was there for two weeks, and it was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life.  Now I have the jar of dirt.

So I sit in silence for a moment this day, missing her laugh and remembering--the gifts she gave and the gift she was to my life. 

Love you forever, Mom.

With Elliot's Eyes

Elliot's eyes grow large as he watches the lift ascend and my chair roll into the van that will take me home.  Again I give thanks for these encounters and how they shape his understanding of who and what is normal in the world.  Then something flips.  Elliot becomes the teacher.   What about 5-year-olds with cerebral palsy today? I wonder.  Do they see with Elliot's eyes?  Can they learn to?  What if a generation of children who have disabilities could see their adaptive equipment as magic; an occasion for wonder?  And what if they never lost that sense of "Wow!"?  And what of me?
 
Of course I'm aware of the things which adaptive equipment makes possible for me.  A wheelchair brings mobility to my  immediate surroundings. Vans with lifts mean I can travel throughout the city.  But I have lost any sense of their magic, if I ever had it .  Except for when the batteries die, I take my power chair for granted.  Paratransit vans evoke anger or at least frustration.  And somewhere inside me lurks an almost primal knowledge that such equipment marks me as different and slow--with a judgment that different and slow are not good things to be.  Can I learn to see with Elliot's eyes?

It is Nicodemus's question:  Can a man enter his mother's womb and be born again?  Can a woman become five?  No.  But maybe. . .   I cannot deny frustration.  I will never love being slow.  Being different is a mixed blessing at best.  But maybe if I also remember Elliot's view of my world, something in that world will change for the better.

The questions linger.  They have no answers.  But I know that in this moment, Elliot and I have taught each other.  We have seen and shaped new possibilities for life.  May we continue to teach.  May we create a new world.  May the seeds of this time be well-nourished, take root, and grow.

The Beauty I Love

The Red Bud tree at my church blooms for about two weeks each year.  For more than twenty years, the sight has stopped me in my tracks.  My friend Nancy planted the tree in memory of her infant daughter.  Nancy's mother, whom I knew as a strong and adventurous woman, is buried beneath its branches.  To sit in awe of its beauty bursting forth would be enough, but the connection to people loved and admired moves me beyond words.

The Sunday after my mother died, I wheeled along the sidewalk lost in memories and grief.  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a delicate lavender flower reaching between the rails of an iron fence.  I stopped, placed my hand under the flower, and ran my finger along its petals.  I sat in silence for a long time, whispered "Thank you" to the flower, and left.

 

In a novel I read recently, the central characters decide to look for something beautiful each day.  I suppose that's a good discipline, but I prefer surprises, beauty that arrests me--the soft touch of a delicate flower; the bursting forth of a Red Bud tree.

"Let the beauty we love be what we do," said Rumi.  Or do nothing.  Just love the beauty you love.

An Invocation

 

 

God,

Can we end the journey here—at the parade?

We would so rather follow a Jesus who is popular,

Who does what we expect.

We want someone who is a warrior, God,

A warrior and a magician,
Who gets rid of the Herods and Pilates in our lives,
Who heals our wounds with a word.

That’s who you seem to be on this day.

Can we end the journey here?

But that’s not love.

Love moves with us through the jeers and taunts,
Bearing our wounds and scars.

 By the end of this week we will know—

 Love is who you are.

 Come move with us, God.