A Few Stocking Stuffers

December 17th, 2013  |   

A Stocking For Warmth And To Hang With Care

Just as soon as the holiday decorations and merchandise made their appearance in the local mall, along with the piped in seasonal tunes, I began to dread the arrival of Christmas. I said to friends that Christmas could go away and come again another day.

My friends have been most understanding about this. Three cards came just today acknowledging that this holiday will be tough, since it is the first Christmas without Judy. Cards, phone calls, letters, and e-mails come regularly. How fortunate I am. But, along with the understanding and the reassurance, there are daily reminders of loss.

By way of example: It was cold here in Charleston last night. Since I work at keeping my heating bills manageable, and I arrived home ready for bed with cold feet, like little John in that old British nursery rhyme who, “went to bed with his stockings on.” I too went to bed with my socks on.  

That’s a new twist for me. For the past fifty-five years, except for winter nights when I was away from home by myself, I had Judy’s body next to me for warmth when my feet went frigid on me. The socks on my feet last night were but another sign of how things have changed over the past fourteen weeks, since Judy’s death in September.

But in this, my final edition of Notes From Under the Fig Tree for 2013, I don’t want to talk about my cold feet.  Instead, I intend to hang those socks by the chimney with care and fill them with a few stocking stuffers. Now, if there is a particular gift in those big socks that kept me warm last night, one that doesn’t fit, or you just plain don’t like, just keep on digging until you find one that suits you.

The Penny Man In Line At The Post Office

There we are, lined up in the Post Office, waiting for an open window where I can mail a package and buy some stamps. I know not one person in the line.

Suddenly a man moves up past me as if to muscle his way to an open window ahead of his turn. As the Brits say, he appeared to be jumping the queue. But since there were no open windows, he must have been up to something else.   

Just a few feet in front of me, he bent down and picked up a penny from the floor. Pocketing it, he retreated to his original place in the line.

Over the years, while waiting in public places, like doctor’s offices, airports, checkout lines in local stores, I have discovered how perfect strangers can find something to talk about with one another.

Years ago, I was herded with dozens of strangers into a Nashville hotel basement in order to be protected from a series of tornados that were moving directly through the downtown portion of the city. Silence wouldn’t suffice. Perfect strangers suddenly began jawing with one another.

In the Charleston Post Office, a look and a smile was all it took for him to break the silence between us. He spoke to me like I was a long-lost friend.

He tells me that when he was a child his mother used to pick up pennies whenever she saw them on the ground. On more than one occasion, he watched her pick up pennies. She had said that they were gifts from heaven. And so, he told me, whenever he spotted a penny he would pick it up and say a prayer for his mother. Since her death, he has collected about $800.

For the past few days, it has rained heavily here in West Virginia—typically familiar flood weather for us. Ever since I met the Penny Man at the Post Office, the tune, “Pennies From Heaven” has been running through my brain. It prompted me to go on line and listen to a rendition of that song, done by the incomparable Billie Holiday.

Listening to the hopeful words from a song written during the Depression—and knowing a bit about the prostitution, drug abuse and prison Billie Holiday had journeyed through herself—it touched my spirit. She lived through it all and somehow managed to give her voice away to all the rest of us.

Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven. Don’t you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven? You’ll find your fortune falling all over town. Be sure that your umbrella is upside down…If you want the things you love, you must have showers. So when you hear it thunder, don’t run under a tree. There’ll be pennies from heaven for you and me.

I like that image—an upside down umbrella.

A Hat Full Of 5,000 Prayers

It’s early in the morning and people are on their way to work. I’ve been out walking and about two blocks from home I see a woman waving at me. I recognize her as a friend I’d done antiwar work with around the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

She has a gift for me. It’s an alpaca hat. It’s gorgeous. Made from the hair of a domesticated South American animal related to a llama, it is a dark blue with small flecks of green in the wool. It is soft and gorgeous.

My friend has spent hours making this hat. Each stitch, about 5,000 of them, she tells me, has been accompanied with a prayer for Judy. She has said five thousand prayers for Judy.

Now that it’s grown bitterly cold here, the hat is getting a workout. Each time I don it I have decided to say my own silent thanksgiving prayer, a mantra for Judy, and for the love of so many people that warm my body and soul.

A Christmas Visit By The Klan And A Trip To Jail

The Christmas season is a magnet for memories. Certain ones come in bold type, with a flash of color. Christmas 1975 comes to mind as one of those unforgettable holidays.

The more informal afternoon Christmas Eve worship service, designed for children, families and friends, had just ended. I was at the back of the church greeting people. One of the St. John’s Church parishioners tapped me on the shoulder. She was distressed.

It seemed that while we were worshiping, celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace, one or more people had come to the Church door to deliver a message, one not concerned about peace at all. The message came in the form of stickers that had been pasted on both church doors. They were the calling cards of the Ku Klux Klan telling us that they had paid a visit to the church.

The intention of the visit was quite clear. The county was in the midst of a violent confrontation about school textbooks, the first multicultural, multiethnic books introduced into schools in West Virginia. The Klan had held rallies in opposition to the books, and had challenged me publically.  At one point, two people had threatened to kill me. I have written on numerous occasions about this battle. It had national implications and the reverberations are still being felt. Texas is presently engaged in a major battle over the adoption of school textbooks that affects the entire textbook industry and, many states choosing textbooks.

I left the then sticker-less church doors behind me and headed home for dinner, with about five hours time for dinner before going back to church for the traditional Christmas Eve midnight mass. But it didn’t work out like that because here’s where the story gets even more interesting. The visitation by the Klan was one thing, but a trip to jail was about to worm its way into our lives, before the evening would be complete.

It just so happened that a wedding had been planned inside the local jail. Because the sheriff needed a pianist, Judy had volunteered to play. After supper, Judy and I drove downtown, gained entrance into the jail, and Judy played, as I watched the chaplain perform the service.

I don’t believe Judy’s conservative, Republican, Presbyterian parents, ever got over Christmas 1975. One thing’s for sure. Judy and I never forgot that Christmas. It was a holy night, but anything but a silent one.

An Open Hand Rather Than A Clenched Fist

Since word first broke last week about Nelson Mandela’s death, the tributes have been constant. The power of nonviolence, forgiveness and love has been overwhelmingly described on the media and in public events. Listening to the tributes brought to mind the long anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, and the church divestiture of investments there.

In the midst of the celebration, some naysayers attempted to poison the atmosphere. Political commentators, and politicians who drink tea laced with a dose of nasty, get fixated on a picture snapped at one of the funeral events.

The picture showed President Obama, on his way to the podium at the memorial service, shaking hands with Cuban leader Raul Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother. The anger generated by that photo boiled over. How dare Obama touch that man’s hand! The hand of friendship should not ever be extended to one’s enemy. Cuba has been on our nation’s enemy list for over half a century. What is he up to shaking a communist’s hand?

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. If anyone should have been unforgiving of the apartheid leadership, it could well have been him. Instead, he chose the path of forgiveness and reconciliation with his enemies. He put flesh and blood around the message of forgiveness, that being to turn the other cheek to the enemy who has delivered a blow to one’s face.

One can only hope that more steps will be taken by President Obama in 2014, both in Cuba and Iran, to reach out across the boundaries, Mandela-like, in order to break down the dividing walls of hostility that threaten peaceful relationships. Extending an open hand rather than a clenched fist.

On Having Been Given A Shirt Off Someone’s Back

A few weeks ago I went to Annapolis for my annual stress test. It was the occasion to see if my five little stents were working, eighteen months after they had been inserted in my heart. As it turned out, there was a need to insert two more to cover an artery that could not be attended to in my previous procedure. All went well and I am in good physical shape.

While there, I spent some time with a friend from high school and college days. We had grown up together, been to school and played lacrosse together. A few years ago his wife died from cancer, and shortly after Judy died, my friend’s twin brother died of a massive brain tumor that had made its appearance only a few months before his death. 

Over breakfast, I noticed that Tom was wearing a collarless shirt. I am fond of that shirt design, but such shirts are difficult to find, and so I asked him where he had gotten it. He told me it came from an Amish shop in Pennsylvania. Before leaving Tom’s home, he brought three shirts of similar design from his closet. Take your pick, he said. Now back home, I have worn that shirt on a couple of occasions. I have thought about that gift and an old phrase describing friendship.

A good friend would give you the shirt off his back.

Friends are pretty easy to acquire these days, just a simple click on a Facebook page. Shirt-giving friendship is more complicated. As for me, the bedrock definition of friendship can be found in just a few words uttered by Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of John (15:13). “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”

That verse is easily visible in a dramatic action where someone literally sacrifices her or his physical life in an attempt to save someone. Less dramatic, but just as profound for me, are the relationships where people give themselves to one another in daily acts of kindness and generosity. What comes to mind for me, are the many caregivers who give and give and give again for someone else.

Since Judy’s death, I have been touched deeply by the friendship that has been directed to me by people near and dear to Judy and me. As this year comes to an end, I wish that I had enough shirts to give away to each and every one of them. My wardrobe will not permit that, so I want to say a simple thank you from the bottom of my heart. Stent-filled and broken over the loss of my best friend, my heart still beats in grateful rhythm for all the friendship shown to me.

A Throng Of Heavenly Jugglers

A dear friend and treasured priest, Esber Tweel, has just recently died. His life was celebrated at St. John’s Episcopal Church here in Charleston.

The night before the memorial service, I discovered that Zach Warren, the son of Dr. Staff Warren and Dr. Sue Warren, was on a train about to arrive here.

Since Zach was a young man, he has been a juggler, cyclist, and master of tricks capable of drawing a crowd. Combined with an education that has focused on international relationships, along with a theological education, he now works in Afghanistan devoting his voluminous energy toward children who have been consumed by war. Quite simply defined, it is circus work. 

When I heard he was coming to pay tribute to Esber, a friend and mentor, an immediate thought pulsed through my brain. I think its origins were from my heart. It was clear to me. Zach must juggle at the memorial service.

And did he ever! To the uplifting music, “The Lord of the Dance,” Zach juggled five oranges in front of a full church ready to smile and applaud his effort. I should add a happy personal note. Zach’s father, Staff, did my cardiac work.

Just before the start of the service, Zach told me that there is an Egyptian Christian story that says the first people who will meet the dead when they are resurrected in heaven will be the jugglers. I like that. I close my eyes and see Judy and Esber being entertained by a joyous throng of jugglers, and the air quite possibly full of oranges.

The Rose Of Sharon Sung About At Christmastide

The continuous, monotonous drumbeat from the political right that thinks that Jesus has been taken from this season, like a baby from a crèche, is a boor at best, a noxious nuisance at worst. The Jesus they want back in the mall is hardly the one born in a stable and forced to flee for being the incarnation of a radically nonviolent way of life for those who want peace from an instrument other than a sword. Consider, if you will, Jesus as the triumph of gratitude over grief.

With that in mind, I close with my own piece of poetry for readers to ponder.

There is something out of kilter in a picture of a cat without claws.

What has someone done to its paws?

It’s like clipping the thorns from a crown intended for Jesus,

the Babe in the Manger we call the Rose of Sharon.

Jesus did not burst from Mary’s womb to be declawed.

Dust off the Christmas hymn, “Lo how a rose e-er blooming.”

Keep the thorns intact.

Sprinkle it with myrrh, a bitter perfume,

as if it were meant for even more than embalming the dead,

yea, as the incense that rejuvenates new life in bodies worn down by death.

Entry Filed under: A Fig Just Dropped Archives

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