The garden’s woes, the garden woos

“I’ve got a garden blanket to put over the frame for your lettuce bed, whenever you’re ready to plant a fall garden,” my friend mentioned to me on the way out of church.

I mentally surveyed the condition of my garden.

It’s that time of year when all the warm weather plants are birthing their ripened fruit. I feel like the lone obstetrician in a maternity ward where fifty pregnant women are in labor at the same time.

I’ve shared some of the bounty, but I have tomatoes ripening so fast that some are rotting before I can get to them. It’s the same with the okra. My wife cooks the world’s best fried okra, but it’s a chore and not something we eat more than once a week, so I’ve started canning them, and still some are maturing too quickly for me to keep them from becoming too large and tough. I’ve enjoyed grilled and smoked cabbage, and Lori has made delicious cabbage soup, but I lost another cabbage the other day. It had rotted before I could get to it.

It’s a gardener’s dream and a gardener’s nightmare all at once.

Of course, the vegetables are not the only plants that have been prolific. I’ve tried to stay as close to organic as possible, but on more than one occasion, I’ve been tempted to blast those weeds with a strong dose of pesticides, herbicides or any cide that will kill them.  Those pesky plants have dropped me to my knees, then well near broke my back as I’ve pulled, yanked, and chopped them. Still they are winning. Flinging them in the air as I throw them out of the garden, I yell, “Out of my garden.” My two Schnauzers’ heads move back and forth in unison as they follow the trajectory of the weeds exiting the garden. Curious eyed, the dogs stare at the whole episode, as if it is some strange human ritual.

All this flashed through my mind as my friend mentioned the fall garden.

Do I really want a fall garden? Am I up to it?

The nineteenth century English poet, Alfred Austin said, “Show me your garden, and I’ll show you what you are.”

“If he’s right, I could be in trouble, “I thought to myself as I continued visualizing the state of my garden.

“You’ve been much too busy this summer,” my wife tells me as I share with her.  “And by the way, those carrots you worked so hard to cultivate, well, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’m not sure it was worth your time.”

She is right, I admit to myself. It’s not been a leisurely summer. And I wonder if gardening is worth the time.

Stopping by the grocery store is so much more convenient. Why bother with all that composting, and preparing the soil, and planting, and cultivating, and harvesting, and cleaning produce, and canning?

But then, as troublesome as gardening can be, there is a joy in it beyond the reward of fresh vegetables. There is a deep satisfaction knowing they were grown on the soil you worked, that little piece of earth you sweated over as you’ve made at least some contribution to The Giving Tree.

The garden has always been there for me, waiting for me, and not just for me to tend to her, but for her to tend to me.

  “I’m going to the garden, “I often tell Lori after a difficult day. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All my hurts my garden spade can heal.”

Walking down to the garden after my conversation with my friend, I take another look.  I have to admit: The garden is only doing what she’s supposed to do in response to the soil preparation, and the planting, and the cultivating.

I could feel Mother Nature smiling on my garden and me.

“Lori,” I shouted from the garden as I made my way back to the house, “I’ve just had a revelation.  I can‘t say ‘no’ to Mother Nature. She’s calling me back, back to the garden. I’ve got to start getting ready for a fall garden.”

Lori sighs and nods in tacit agreement.

“I’ll get the skillet ready,” she says. “Bring me a batch of okra.”

Where is the love?

Imagine that your 42 year old son has died after a four year battle with a rare disease that has destroyed his internal organs. You are grieving at his casket the night of the wake when an official of the church---the church which earlier in this horrid week approved the ceremony---calls you, informing you that they can no longer honor your request to have the funeral in the church as planned tomorrow.

“Why?” you ask.

“Because we found out your son was married…to a man.”

The conversation may not have been in those exact words, but that’s what happened to Julie Atwood a few weeks ago when the Reverend T. W. Jenkins, Pastor of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida, officially cancelled her son’s funeral the night before it was to take place the next day. Her son, Julion Evans, was married to Kendall Capers two years ago after 17 years together.

“It was devastating,” Ms. Atwood said of the experience. “I did feel like he (Julion) was being denied the dignity of death.” Church officials told Ms. Atwood it would be “blasphemous” to have the funeral in the church, the same church where she was baptized and where family members still attend.

Kendall Capers expressed to Tampa Bay NBC affiliate WFLA that he understood the Pastor’s position but added that the abrupt cancellation was “disrespectful” and “wrong.”

“Regardless of our background, our sexual orientation, how can you wait that long and put someone in a bind when they're going through a loss? asked Capers.

They did have the service at the funeral home where the wake had been held, but many mourners missed the service because they went to New Hope Church, unaware that the venue had been changed the night before.

What to make of this?

I can understand Pastor Jenkins dilemma.  For whatever reason, he apparently wasn’t aware that Mr. Evans and Mr. Capers were a gay couple. When several irate church members brought it to his attention, he made a decision not to violate his own principles:  "I try not to condemn anyone's lifestyle, but at the same time, I am a man of God and have to stand upon my principles.”

And ultimately, Reverend Jenkins and his church had every right to refuse the family’s request for the funeral in the church.

And yet, more than a principle is involved here. These are real people with real feelings: grieving people, hurting people, desperate people.

People needing a word of hope.

But hope is not what they received from a people whose church is named New Hope.

Pastor Jenkins said he tries not “to condemn anyone’s lifestyle.” Yet two person’s lifestyle is the very reason he refused to conduct the funeral.

As a pastor, I’m sure I've conducted funerals for people whose lifestyle I didn't approve: people addicted to alcohol and drugs, adulterers, gossips, hypocrites. But conducting a funeral is not necessarily an endorsement of the deceased’s lifestyle choices.

Pastor Jenkins and the church could have made that clear to the family and gone ahead with the funeral as planned.

But even then, is it always necessary for a church to point out to the grievers all the areas where the deceased’s lifestyle was at variance with the church’s standards? Does that help mourners work through their grief?

And what if not all the deceased’s family shares all the pastor’s principles? The couple in question certainly didn't view their sexual orientation as blasphemous, nor did they think it necessary to hide it: “It’s not like we woke up and said, ‘let’s be gay,’ someone we were born with and we've dealt with it for me, 40 years, him 42 years, and we make the best possible choices,” said  Capers to WFLA. Granted, their lifestyle was in violation of this particular church’s principles, but is refusing to minister to the grieving the best way to convince them to live by a church’s teaching?

Perhaps in their minds, the pastor and people were expressing love by their harsh actions. Maybe they thought such a demonstration of “tough love” would prompt sinners to repent. If so, New Hope would not be the first to justify their actions with that kind of reasoning. Indeed, such rationalization was institutionalized during a dismal era of the church, the Medieval Inquisition, when the church resorted to torture in order to ferret out heresy.

No, I don’t believe the family of Julion Evans is feeling the love, at least not from New Hope.

Love will have to come from another kind of Christianity, a Christianity intent on loving people unconditionally, even those people who do not abide by the church’s principles.

Stories from the baptistery

Connor rocked back and forth on his heels, biting his lip as his eyes darted back and forth, scanning my office.

It was his baptism day.

“It’s okay to be nervous,” I said, trying to put him at ease as he left my office with his parents on the way to the baptistery.

His father had warned me earlier that Connor was anxious about being baptized. “He’s worried that you’re going to ask him a lot of questions,” his dad had grinned.

I understood for I had been close to Connor’s age, eight, when I was baptized. Like Connor, I was an outgoing child, but the day I stood next to the pastor and made what we in my faith tradition call a “profession of faith” before being baptized, I was more than a bit fidgety: I felt like bolting and running. When the pastor introduced me in front of the congregation, I tried scooting behind him and hiding.

“Connor, I won’t ask you any questions other than the two we've already talked about, okay?”

He exhaled in relief.

But I could hear his voice quivering once we were standing outside the baptistery: “Is the water hot?”

I let him dip his hands in to test it.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” is the lead sentence in Joan Didion’s essay, The White Album. The sentence became the title for her collected works I suppose because it is so pregnant with meaning. In one simple sentence it addresses the complex nature of life and how we yearn to glean some order or purpose from the ambiguities that surround us daily. We do that by telling ourselves stories, “in order to live,” Didion wrote.

“And sometimes in order to relieve tension,” I thought as I watched Connor clasping and unclasping his hands.

I looked at the ladies who assisted with the baptism but stood close to Connor to make sure he heard my story.

“One time when I was in a different church, I was about to baptize a guy about Connor’s age,” I said as I placed my hand on his head.  “What I didn't know was that the custodian had gotten the water way too hot. When the boy stepped into the water he screamed like a cat that got its tail caught in the door, and everyone in the congregation looked toward the baptistery to see what was going on. “Yeeouh, I can’t do it,” he yelled after he jerked his foot out of the hot water.

“What did you do?” one of the ladies helping Connor asked.

“Well, his grandparents had driven several hours to see the baptism that morning. So, I told some of the men in the church to let the water cool while I preached, and then after my sermon we would have the baptism. I gave the men strict instructions to fill several buckets with ice. They were to wait until the music was playing and the people were singing during the invitational hymn and only then were they to throw the ice into the water.”

“What happened?” Connor asked.

“The men missed their cue. Just when I had everyone bow their heads and close their eyes for prayer, just at that tender and quiet moment in the worship service when I ask people to make decisions for Christ, lo and behold if the men didn't throw all that ice into the baptistery. The audience heard a big crash like a glacier had collapsed, leaving them looking at each other, wondering, ‘What in the world was that?’ But I did get the little guy baptized, and everything worked out.”

By now Connor was giggling.

“Watch your step,” I cautioned Connor as we entered the baptismal waters.

“Connor, did you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord?”

Without the slightest hesitation in his voice, Connor responded, “Yes, sir.”

“Do you choose to be his follower, his disciple?”

“Yes sir,” Connor declared.

When Connor looked up to me just before I lowered him into the water, he didn't need to say anything more because the peace in his eyes bespoke the presence  of the one in whose name he was about to be baptized.

“I’m proud for you, Connor,” I said as we exited the baptistery.

“Now you've got a story to tell about the day you were baptized. Remember to tell it, “I added.

And I believe he will.

For we indeed tell stories in order to live.

And sometimes to relax a bit and take in the story we are living in the moment.

Looking into my father in law’s eyes

The eyes that once danced with life---eyes that could focus with the intensity of an eagle after its prey or love with the affection of a mother for her baby--- now stare blankly at nothing, emotionless. I peer into those eyes, hoping for something: maybe the reboot of a soul, the reemergence of then into now, the return of the Old George I miss so much.

The first time I shook hands with him the palms of my hands were sweaty, for I was nervous. He was the father of the girl I wanted to take to the homecoming dance my senior year in high school. The only hitch was, she was four years younger than I.

“Hey Whitlock, going for the young girl?” my friends teased.

George wasn't amused.

And that was the first time I remember those eyes, squinting as they did in my direction, sizing me up, surveying my actions.

During the next three years that I would date his daughter, his suspicious eyes would come to look upon me with trust. His once restrictive eyes became giving ones.

And then I departed and didn't see those eyes for 27 years, until as circumstances would have it, I was reunited with his daughter.

On our wedding day, his eyes glistened with pride, and for the next ten years they would delight when we arrived and sadden when we left. And while we were together, they sparkled with a glint when he bantered and narrowed to a gaze when he reflected. And all the while those bright eyes bubbled like a fresh cherry limeade soda, adding fizz to life.

Until about a year and a half ago when they began to go flat and dull, dimming into a vacant stare.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia.  Many people use Alzheimer’s and dementia interchangeably, but they are not the same. Dementia is a broad category while Alzheimer’s is a specific type. Since my father in law’s diagnosis, I've learned that dementia isn't technically a disease but rather a group of symptoms that affect mental tasks like memory and reasoning. George can recall the past with specific detail and then repeatedly ask what the plan for the day is. Sometimes he is clear; other times he is confused.

Dementia can be caused by a variety of conditions. Alzheimer’s just happens to be the leading one.  Since it is a condition that results from damage to the brain, it’s not something one can determine to overcome with willpower.

According to the World Health Organization, 35.6 million people suffer from dementia.  It’s a major cause of disability among older people and places an emotional and financial burden on caregivers. I've already seen the effects on my mother-in-law. In their 52 years of marriage, he has been her rock, her navigator, her love. He is still very much the love of her life and always will be, but she can no longer lean on him as she once did, for he is more dependent on her than she is on him.

“How did you sleep last night?” I ask before they leave for the airport after a five day visit with us.

“To tell you the truth, I can’t remember where I slept last night,” he says, befuddled. “Now remind me, where are we going?”

“Oh yes,” he chuckles nonchalantly when I tell him, as if being unable to remember where he has been and where he is going and what he ate five minutes ago is no more serious than misplacing a fountain pen or forgetting a friend’s cell number.

I fought back tears then just like I do now as I write this column.

As he gets in the car to leave, I look square-on into those eyes, telling them with mine how much I love him, for I know not what if anything my father-in-law’s eyes will say the next time I see them.

Singing about Christmas in July

My wife occasionally bursts into song when it’s just the two of us at home.  “You have a really good voice,” I compliment her. “You should be singing in the choir.”

She disagrees: “My voice isn't that good. Remember, I didn't even make the Varsity Choir in high school.”

I think she’s improved.

I heard her again the other day.  She had the pitch and the tune down pat, but something was just not right.

The song, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” seemed out of place.

“Isn't that a Christmas song?” I asked as I peeked around the corner.

“Yes.”

“Why are you singing a Christmas hymn in the middle of July?”

“I like the song,” she answered.

At least she wasn't trying to spiritualize her way to a Christmas in July sale.

Not that I fault retailers for dragging Christmas from December into July.  What’s a marketer to do when there are no holidays between July 4^th and Memorial Day to use as an excuse for a sale? Grab one from another season, of course.  Since Christmas is the most commercialized of holidays, it works quite nicely.

But we can’t totally blame retailers for hijacking Christmas from its December perch.

According to one online source (http://ourfriendben.wordpress.com/) the first Christmas in July was celebrated by an Ohio fraternity in 1884. (I suppose there are worse excuses for having a party.)

But the phrase “Christmas in July” didn’t occur until ten years later in a movie. In response to a group of children rehearsing a Christmas song in July one of the characters says: “When you sing Christmas in July, you rush the season.”

In 1933 a girls’ camp in North Carolina celebrated Christmas in July by exchanging presents and welcoming a visit from Santa Claus.

“Christmas in July” showed up as a movie title in 1940.

In 1942 the Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. started celebrating Christmas in July with carols and a sermon on the subject. He wanted his congregation to share gifts with those in need as part of a worldwide mission effort.

Meanwhile, during WWII the US Post Office in conjunction with the military launched a Christmas in July campaign to assure that those serving overseas received their Christmas cards, letters, and gifts by Christmas.

It wasn't until the 1950s, at the dawn of the Madmen era, that the advertising agencies picked up on the Christmas in July idea as a way of promoting merchandise.

So there you have it: For over a century we've been celebrating Christmas in July in a variety of ways.

Christmas doesn't have to happen only in December.

And now with the polar invasion, the temperatures might cool just enough for you to settle around a fireplace, roast chestnuts, and imagine Jack Frost nipping at your nose.

So I ask myself, “Why can’t my wife sing a Christmas song in July?” 

She’s not rushing the season; she’s enjoying the presence of Christ as she sings.

After all, the hymn writer wrote the words, “O come, O come Emmanuel.”

If Christ can come to an out of the way country like Judea in an obscure village called Bethlehem, surely he comes to you when you sing about it in July, or any month.

And you don’t have to host a sale as an excuse for your carol.

Fallen Trees

I called it my African tree, although it had reached maturity long before I took possession of the property on which it stood. “Look at it,” I said to my wife as we sat on our back patio. “It’s out of Africa and out of place and so alone. It looks like one of those trees I knew from my summer in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Africa when I was a kid.”

And it did. The gnarled truck with its greenish yellow bark culminated in an umbrella shaped crown, like the trees you might see on the African savannah or pictured on the book cover of Out of Africa or The Poisonwood Bible.

Some evenings as Lori and I would gaze beyond the African tree to the orange backdrop the sunset’s glow  had painted, I would reminisce about that summer so many years ago in Africa:  how I would try to keep up with Dr. Giles Fort as he, in his khaki shirt and pants and pith helmet, would hustle to make his hospital rounds; the early morning sight and smell of smoke rising in the villages; the distant beat of African drums that would put me to sleep late into the night; the elephants which were still able to roam with some degree of freedom back then; my new found African friends singing, clapping, dancing around their campfires.   

The tree invited me back to a place and time that was no more but still was here and now, soothing my soul after the grind of another work day.

I liked that the tree was quite unlike any others in our backyard. My African tree was its own creation, unique, uncommon, individual.

Then I noticed one day my African tree had lost a limb. It was quite old, I guessed. Then it lost another.  One day I looked out and saw only open sky where my African tree had been. 

“What’s happened to my African tree?” I shouted to Lori as I rushed down to the edge of our property to investigate.

Maybe it was the strong wind, or perhaps lightening. But the tree was down.

My African tree: It was no more.

I missed my African tree.

What do you do with a fallen tree?

I researched it.  I could hollow out the trunk and use it as planter; I could make a tree trunk bench or log stool; I could even drill a hole in it and make a vase. Or I could cut up the wood and burn it.

But none of these ideas or similar ones appealed to me. I’m not crafty, and I don’t need to burn wood. Besides, much of the tree’s trunk was decaying.

So I let the tree lie there, resting in peace, like a grave marker for the deceased.

Somewhere in the cold of winter, the African tree faded from my memory.

Then spring came.

I was showing my twenty-two month old grandson what I had planted in my garden. And he was most engaged, or so it seemed to me. Then quite suddenly we were interrupted by something.

Even though he was clutching my hand, Eli almost tripped over the African tree’s trunk.

I looked down on it. The tree seemed to be pleading, “Hey, don’t you remember me?”

I was sorry for my African tree.

So I explained to Eli how my African tree was once special to me because of its uniqueness and the memories it prompted.

Eli studied the trunk as he gnawed on his pacifier.

So holding him in my lap, I sat down on my tree, and we talked some more.

“Let’s thank the Lord for what we can see of our beautiful Kentucky from this place, here on this tree trunk,” I said.

Eli nodded and declared, “Amen.” (It’s one of the first words I taught him.)

Now the two of us return quite regularly to our African tree trunk to sit and talk about nothing in particular.

My fallen African tree is the perfect perch for Eli and me to sit and ponder, to stop and stare at the open field below. It’s like one of those scenic rest stops you might chance upon as you travel a road to someplace else.

Only we aren’t going anywhere; we’re planted here at home, home in Kentucky.

And that’s okay, because from that tree, I feel the past as I peer all the way from Kentucky to Africa and back to the present moment.

Even as I hold the future in my lap.

In need of a hug?

She sits among several of her fellow residents at the long term care facility I visit, ensconced in her wheel chair, sometimes napping, sometimes staring. I suppose I've walked past her dozens of times, greeting her with a casual “Hello” or “How are you?” I can’t say I've taken the time to wait for a response. I've felt her tired eyes following me as I've quickly disappeared around the corner and down the hallway.

But this day, she stopped me cold in my tracks.

She seemed to cock her head slightly to the right, squinting in my direction, and before I could pass by, she declared in a gruff voice I heard for the first time: “You’re good looking.”

Suppressing a smile and glancing around to see if anyone else had heard, I thanked her.

“Well, you are,” she said, as if to preempt any disavowal on my part.

I shook my head from side to side, chuckling to myself as I walked down the hall. Then later, having made my visits, I returned to exit from the same place I had entered.

She was still guarding the hallway.

“Well,” I said grinning at her, “Am I?”

“Are you what?” she rejoined matter of factly.

“Am I still good looking?” I jokingly asked, but also testing her memory.

“Oh yeah,” she said with no expression, “You’re good looking.”

“I think I’m going to tell my wife what you said, just in case she’s forgotten or disagrees,” I teased.

“What’s her name?”

“Lori.”

“Well, she’ll agree,” she affirmed.

That evening, Lori enjoyed hearing about my new friend at the long term care facility.

The next week, when I visited the facility, she was in her usual place.

“How are you?” This time I waited long enough for her answer.

She wasn’t feeling well. “Probably a cold,” she told me.

Having made my visits, I spoke to her on my way out.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

Her words halted my speedy exit.

“Well, yes,” I answered, “I love you.”

“Then prove it,” she demanded.

I hesitated  before asking  with some degree of trepidation, “How?”

“Hug me,” was her simple answer.

That was it, a hug. That’s what she really wanted from someone.

Now picture this: Germaphobe that I am, I bend down and try pulling her towards me from her wheel chair so I can wrap my arms around the dear soul. And just as I get up close and personal, she begins coughing uncontrollably. Too late to retreat, I absorb it.

Then, with arms around her, I squeeze for just a moment.

“Did I prove it?” I ask.

“You did,” she said, apparently satisfied.

I've read where we need at least eight hugs a day to maintain emotional well-being. And I suppose there is truth in that. Maybe mine was just one among her eight for the day, but guessing by her reaction, it seemed like her only one.

You don’t have to be in a long term care facility to be there, in that lonely place, uncertain if anyone cares enough to reach down and extend a hand of grace.  And in your ache, your request remains buried deep within, for you fear you might receive the answer you dread hearing and so you endure the prolonged angst anticipating no response at all. You blend into the furniture you inhabit and fade into the walls surrounding you. You feel yourself melting into the floor beneath you.

Even as you still long for a rescue.

I suppose she had many hugs in her past--- but having come to this day in this place, an occupant in what is likely her last residence on earth---she needed that particular one. Life, when it comes to that point, is something of a bittersweet symphony: Having put so much in, we only want in return something beautiful, even if it is a tiny thing--- an embrace, a touch, or an acknowledgement that we exist. Even when we are beyond articulating it in sophisticated ways, we secretly hope some kind words we attempted might one day bear fruit in those to whom we have given them and that we in turn might reap some good in our time of need.

Even if it’s only a hug from a stranger.