Back Under My Fig Tree

May 24th, 2019  |   

Pig In A Poke On My Porch

On my daily walk downtown, I pass the church I once served years ago. The columbarium in the church garden is a stone wall with a niche, space that has held Judy for over five years. Next to her, a recently opened niche now holds our son, Stephen.

You see, back in August, I was about to climb into bed when the phone rang. On the other end of the call was my daughter-in-law’s hysterical voice: “Stephen is dead.” He was snatched away, as if he were a small animal, prey for a red-tailed hawk. Judy’s and my 58-year-old firstborn child was gone. No warning. Suddenly his heart just stopped beating. He could no longer draw a breath, no longer share a word. 

After a toss-and-turn night, trying to follow some semblance of my regular morning routine, I went to the front door to fetch the newspaper. There, on the doorstep, was a plastic bag filled with sliced ham, left there by a friend, who had already heard about Stephen. Tucked inside the bag was a card with a simple handwritten message.

It read, I can’t find the words…

Words—Lost Not Found

Needless to say, the pig in the poke on my front porch, the sliced ham, is long gone. The note, also, has disappeared, carried off to the trash dump. But the words scribbled on that piece of paper don’t want to go away. They cling to my brain, like a message held by a magnet on the refrigerator door.

No matter how busy and engaged I’ve been, that lonely, incomplete message won’t go away. It’s indelible. Time after time, over and over again, since the night the note arrived on my doorstep, the words continue to haunt me.

I can’t find the words…

Time–Tick-Tocking Along

Recently a friend made an observation about time. “Jim, the older I get, the faster time flies.” I know, firsthand, what she was talking about. The truth of the matter, however, is that time doesn’t have an irregular beat. It’s not like an arrhythmic heart. It just keeps tick-tocking along. Time only stops on a scoreboard for a timeout, or when the battery in my bedside clock dies. Real time, a term news commentators like to toss about, just goes tick-tocking along.  

Actually, my friend and I really do know an even more penetrating truth about time, flying by at NASCAR race speed. The whole truth and nothing but the truth? Time seems to be moving faster as we age, because we know we have less of in front of us.

From another vantage point, as Dr, Seuss put it, “How did it get so late so soon?”

Finding Words

After over 33 years of writing Notes From Under the Fig Tree, I just plain ran out of words. Better said, they ran out on me, and I couldn’t find them. Christmas, 2017, was my last edition of Notes. Trying to find the words to write, Little Bo Peep, who lost her sheep and didn’t know where to find them, came to mind. I hadn’t lost any sheep. I had lost words and couldn’t find them.

Had I finally been stunned into silence by the mother lode of Donald Trump lies? It certainly felt that way, with his perverse attack on words, flagrantly fake and uniformly untrustworthy. Brought up to respect the veracity of someone who would give me his or her word on some matter, truth was clouded over by the multitude of lies that have poured forth from his mouth. Trump’s reckless use of words makes it seem like words don’t count anymore. 

Since Donald Trump has occupied the White House, I’ve seen folks stumbling around like characters from the television series, The Walking Dead. They’re post-traumatic ballot survivors struggling to stay alive amidst a zombie apocalypse.

Personally, I feel like I have been drowning in a sea of words, too many words, sinking in a tidal wave of tweets, the character limit having doubled since Donald Trump’s election. Perhaps the overblown high-pitched intensity of cable news, with its broken breaking news, hysterically shrill commentators, with apoplectic faces yelling and interrupting one another, has also done damage, souring my longtime love of words.

Was I just plain out of kilter, written-out, sick of words, dog-tired of searching for them? I don’t think so because, unable to find my own words, I have been turning book pages voraciously, burying myself in book after book, hoping that the printed words might jump-start my own writing.

Grief Seeps

Because grief has a way of seeping into every aspect of our lives, always associated with loss, perhaps losing my words had something to do with grief.

Had the burden of grief over the loss of Judy, my brother, and Stephen, in such a short passage of time, finally caught up with me? Perhaps this seemingly futile search for words was connected to time, the awareness that my life was running out of time, time to find more words to write? 

Trying for months to find words to break the silence, merely to write this message, a very threatening question confronted me. Would I ever write anything again? And, if I could find the words, would I have enough time to record them, share them? Had my life, like a football game, arrived at the final two-minute warning, with more points still to be put on the scoreboard, before time runs out?

Back To Little Bo Peep

What a dreadful thought, Little Bo Peep losing her sheep, and not knowing where to find them. Lost, nowhere in sight, she searched but could not find them. Then it came to her, a moment of enlightenment.

Stop searching for them, Bo Peep; sit down and they will find you.

That’s me, you see. I’ve been searching for words, but unable to find them. So I have come back home to sit under my fig tree, waiting for them to find me.

And didn’t I really know it all along? When you can’t find the words, they will find you. That’s the way it works. Like they did when I was too young to speak, a newborn. I didn’t teach myself how to read, didn’t know what a word was. Words found me, thanks to the people in my life who talked me into speaking, spoke me into words. The words entered my ears, found a path to my brain, and then moved on to my lips. I hope, also, having moved through my heart. Then, in a marvelously circuitous way, the words became flesh, spoken and written.

So, I am back under my fig tree fully expectant that the words will find me. As you can see, I have already captured a few. I intend to be disciplined about passing words on to my readers. I will be sharing bits and pieces of a book I hope to complete, a collection of pieces honed and cultivated from past writings, along with fresh observations and insights. A number of people have encouraged me to use my time, whatever I am graced with, to continue my writings, as the words find me.

The Book of Job, in the Hebrew Scriptures, offers a reminder that our days are numbered. And, like a number on a lottery ball, our lifespan will only be known when the ball drops from the spinning cage, and the number can be read. 

Until the ball drops, I hope that you, as one of my Notes From Under the Fig Tree readers, will stay in touch by sharing words that find you, under whatever tree you sit.  (ejlchas@aol.com)

Add comment May 24th, 2019

In The Bleak Midwinter—Comfort & Joy

December 25th, 2017  |   

Christmas Day is about to come to an end. I had my Christmas dinner a few hours ago at the Concord Hospital cafeteria. No, I wasn’t a patient. I was eating with my daughter Deb, who was a nurse on duty there.

Last night, Deb, granddaughter Sarah, and I went to the Christmas Eve service at the local Episcopal Church. I was there anticipating the music, with familiar carols to sing.

One that pierces my soul, while penetrating my heart, is Christina Rossetti’s “In The Bleak Midwinter.” It was Judy’s favorite carol. Perhaps, in part, that’s because she grew up in Western New York where “earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone” and “snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow.”

Right now, even without snow or subfreezing temperatures, our nation is living in a bleak midwinter, a cultural, moral, and political midwinter. Bitter winds blow harshly over our country.  Shakespeare called times like this, “The winter of our discontent.” John Steinbeck appropriated those words for the title of his last novel. Steinbeck stated that he wrote the novel to address the moral degeneration of American culture, interestingly enough, just prior to Watergate.

The Christmas story tells us that Mary, “pondered’ the conception and birth of Jesus. I love the word “ponder.” It invites focusing, meditating, looking for substantial meaning into and about what goes on around us and within us. In the world of “breaking news” and broken people and systems, pondering is the prelude to cultural, moral, and political change.

Today, prior to supper at the hospital, I was alone at home. It offered me the opportunity to ponder the Christmas carols. The familiar words, “tidings of comfort and joy” captured my attention. How do I reconcile holding onto a message, a belief in comfort and joy in the bleak midwinter world where I live?

Do I live in Dr. Seuss’ Whoville,  where I join folks who sing joyously even though the Grinch has robbed them unmercifully? Is this Mean One, with a heart two sizes smaller than a compassionate person, consumed by talk of war, no more than a bully who plays his own game of Monopoly, in favor of the rich, at the expense of the poor?

Pondering past Christmas seasons, I see quite clearly that my nation has been at war against the poor, here at home and around the world, during my entire life. We have drunk from a chalice full of greed, unrestrained power, and unlimited war. I think of the Christmas I sang about tidings of comfort and joy, and heavenly angels singing while we were dropping bombs from the sky on the people of Vietnam and Cambodia. And still, it continues. And yet, we continue to sing. Is it required that we keep singing?

Ursula Le Guin writes that she has come away from musical concerts  “marveling that while our republic tears itself apart and our species frantically hurries to destroy its own household, yet we go on building with vibrations in the air, in the spirit—making this music, this intangible , beautiful, generous thing.”

So now it’s time to lay me down to sleep. Put the pondering to bed, believing in and anticipating those vibrations in the air, in the spirit, that keep us faithful in the struggle for peace, and justice, and a sturdy love in the bleak midwinter. To awaken and sing a new song in this strange land.

Add comment December 25th, 2017

Thanksgiving Reckonings

November 22nd, 2017  |   

Walking through the Charleston Mall recently, weeks away from Thanksgiving and Christmas, I had one of those thoughts I knew, even then, I’d have to rethink. A reckoning day would surely come.

I wish Thanksgiving and Christmas would just go away. That’s what crossed my mind.

Monday was my reckoning day. It came while drinking coffee with a friend. Our conversation made me come to grips with that Mall-moment. Asking him what he would be doing for Thanksgiving, he beamed. “I’ll be driving to Pittsburgh to spend the holiday with my family.” He effervesced, telling me about how much it had always meant for him to be at the Thanksgiving table with his family.

You cannot have done church work for as long as I have without recognizing that Thanksgiving, and Christmas as well, are difficult times for a number of people, for a variety of reasons. So, in the face of whatever grief or complaint lies behind the thought of wishing Thanksgiving away, it’s understandable. I get it when I hear someone say these particular holidays are the unpleasant times when cultural, religious, patriotic, and familial expectations are foisted upon her or him.

Some 60 million people have taken to the highways and flight paths for Thanksgiving. Why? Is there some lemming-like factor at work that causes folks to leap into traffic, and a gigantic sea of heart-clogging food? Like, you know, too much isn’t enough? Or could it be a deep existential longing to be gathered with people, to belong, eating at a table with others? To just plain not be so alone?

Today a friend told me that over 60 million people are polled as being unhappy with Thanksgiving. What is it that troubles them? The excessive commercialization? Could it be some annoying presence at the gathering, after a hectic, tiring journey? A wacky uncle; a family member who voted for Trump; a slobbering drunk; a couple who argue with one another at the table; a person who uses the occasion to argue that boys should go to the men’s room and girls go to the their own room to pee; a relative who brings a huge, slobbering dog to the table? It might be even more serious, like having to be around the table with someone who has been the cause of past abuse and pain. 

We certainly have the right to choose our dinner partners. We can gather with “like-minded” folks, “kindred spirits,” and enjoy a warm comradery. We can shun the superfluous indulgence that invites a gluttonous appetite. We can dine with vegetarians, vegans, or eat Tofurky with folks who wish that our president would pardon all turkeys, not just one. Or we can just eat alone.

Wherever we spend Thanksgiving, I do believe we are challenged to offer thanks. Genuine gratitude will come, as it so often does, not only in the happiest times, but also as strange as it may seem, in the rough-and-tumble realities that confront each one of us personally and in the larger world in which we live.

So, dear friends, eat well and be ready to entertain a grateful heart, finding a feast wherever you spend Thanksgiving Day.

Add comment November 22nd, 2017