The Only Real Thing



I attended Dundee Elementary School with my brother and sister
in the 1950s. Now my great-niece Desi and my great-nephew
Bowen are students there. Built early in the 20th century, Dundee
was beautifully renovated and restored in the 1980s. Architects,RDG Planning & Design, Omaha

SAFE PLACES



When I was six years old, I was afraid of

the Cold War, the Communists, nuclear bombs,

and whatever atrocities I could invent out of

semihistorical, quasi-true stories my brother

would whisper in sinister accents, with grisly

asides and horrific embellishments. Probably

he was as frightened as I was. Maybe we had an

unspoken agreement: I was the terrified child,

crying my heart out till Daddy gave in to

annoyance or pity, I wasn't sure which. In the

nest of my parents' bed, I slept the sleep

of the innocent, and my brother was rescued

vicariously. Apparently, that was sufficient
for him.

No matter how bad the catastrophe,

no matter how scary the story might be, I was

safe with my mom and dad,

safe at the neighbors’,

safe in the chapel, and

safe at my school, where

forsythias, lilacs, and quince bloomed in spring.

flower-gardening-made-easy.com

The air-raid drills didn’t scare me—I

merely felt silly when I had to crouch
like a frog on the floor,
with my hands locked behind my neck.
Even we first-graders knew that the stuff they called

nuclear fallout was more of a threat than our

six-year-old hands could deflect.

I certainly never imagined that tragedy
might walk right into our classroom one day,
armed and dangerous, angry and sick and
despairing, and blow us away.

I thought I knew fear but I didn’t know this: The most
frightening thing in the world might exist in my mind,
with the monsters and witches that rattled the blinds,
creaked the floors, and ate six-year-old girls for a snack
late at night, when the wrath of hell, multiplied fifty times fifty
and more, wouldn't wake Mom and Dad. 

Even so, for a moment’s peace, I never had to
destroy everything that is childhood, the living
expressions of what might be threatening me if not already
shriveled inside. I can’t picture that depth of aloneness,
despair and insanity; I never want to. But God,
help me understand how it can be that he
scorned his own flesh and he sought the abyss, and
he punished the agent by which he was made, and if
he had known how to he would have killed you.

Tell me, dear God, how to pray for his family. Where did his world
go so wrong? Show me two dozen children with guardian angels
as Heaven's door opens, embracing each one of them. God, may the
mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers and aunties be
witnesses too.

In your grace keep us safe, keep our love strong, and
keep us believing in what is the only real thing, 
all that’s true:

Love is him
Love is them
Love is me
Love is you
Love is all that’s true

'You are the reason for the unexpected hummingbird'

Van Gogh, Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky, 1890

Great Big Prayer

Delaying Destiny

Budapest at Night (Wikipedia)

Cliffhanger

Source: dundeetriathlon.com

Whatever future I embrace, this much I

comprehend: Never again need I roam the

slippery, rain-soaked streets of Budapest or

Burlington, Iowa, my face contorted with

angst and with trying to keep water out of

my eyes… in a torment of conscience at war

with yearning… struggling with my destiny

for what I devoutly hoped would be the last

time, since I have run out of synonyms for

angst, not to mention the uncertainty as to

pronunciation: Does angst rhyme with

bankst or bonkst?

Should I listen to my heart and follow my

desire to be a rain-soaked, angst-torn, dime-store

novelist? Should I bow to duty and

pursue a calling as a passionate,

Snake Alley; Burlington, Iowa

anachronistic, hollow-cheeked, myopic

Whig reformer, like my father and his father

before him and his father and his father’s

auntie Pru, and so forth? Or should I

surrender to the primal longing for a

double-chocolate-cherry malt at the DQ and

resolve the question of my destiny in the

night’s chill nonchalance after the wine-and-cheese

affair at the textile museum?

Ì

THE HISTORY OF BUDAPEST began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia.

Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century. Their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241-42. The re-established town became one of the centers of Renaissance humanist culture in the 15th century.

Following the Battle of Mohács and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, development of the region entered a new age of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became a global city after the 1873 unification. It also became the second capital of Austria-Hungary, a great power that dissolved in 1918.

After the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, when Hungary lost 72 percent of its former territory, culturally and economically the country became wholly Budapest-dominated. Budapest was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Operation Panzerfaust in 1944, the Battle of Budapest of 1945, and the Revolution of 1956. —Wikipedia

SNAKE ALLEY, IN BURLINGTON, IOWA, has been called "the Crookedest Street in the World." The physical limitations and steep elevation of Burlington's Heritage Hill inspired the construction of Snake Alley in 1894. It was intended to link the downtown business district and the neighborhood shopping area located on North Sixth Street, of which Snake Alley is a one-block section. Three German immigrants conceived and carried out the idea of a winding hillside street, similar to vineyard paths in France and Germany: Charles Starker, an architect and landscape engineer; William Steyh, the city engineer; and George Kriechbaum, a paving contractor. The street was completed in 1898, but was not originally named Snake Alley, as it was considered part of North Sixth Street; some years later, a resident noted that it reminded him of a snake winding its way down the hill, and the name stuck. —Wikipedia

War Zones

WHO’S GOT YOUR BACK? *

You can hold your head high; keep your upper
lip as stiff as triple starch; and arch your brow in
such a way as to convey an attitude of sans souci
when trouble’s in the wind… and if the wind
brings stormy weather and you’re double-jointed
and you’re Gumby or his cousin, you can

let a smile be your umbrella
on a rainy, rainy day
and if your sweetie cries, just tell her
that a smile will always pay. [1]

And, really, who’s to say? The sleepiest cliché
could actually be quite profound, and there
might truly be a thousand ways to lift your chin
up off the ground. But still, the body knows the
difference between a grimace and a grin.
Eventually, the body pays.

Perhaps it has been said of moi, The woman has
a spine. If such a comment has been made
about my character, the maker of it hasn’t seen
my MRI or peered beneath my skin at what
resembles nothing more than sticks and string
that tenuously cling to the remains of bony
architecture and the wreck of joints and
tendons, cartilage and musculature once upon a
time robust and flexible.

Was I proud of being strong enough to carry
groceries and babies up three flights of stairs and
never turn a hair? Not that I should have
spurned assistance, but I surely wouldn’t have
expected any or believed that I deserved it. I had
lost my purpose, sabotaging my defenses; hence
began the little wars (where all wars start) inside —
my pride just then contending with my spine, if
recollection serves. I barely noticed at the time,
for I was occupied with making virtue of
necessity, which I called independence rather
than confess (once Mom and Dad had left) what
I was lacking: self-respect and someone’s lap to
nestle in. What happened was, I read the memo
wrong and thought I was intended as the
sacrifice; in point of fact a vast, eternal paradise
was meant for me, and all along — as now, at
last, I understand — God had my back.



[1] “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella” (1927), music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal and Francis Wheeler 

* Suggested by "Wipe Out," the August 29, 2012, episode of Intuitive Health by Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D., on HayHouseRadio.com

One of the Astonishments

Aurora Borealis (wallpaperswide.com)

BARENAKED LOVE

Have you ever been just skipping, skipping down a dusty path

beside a river that is very busy making merry water-drops, and there

you are, without a loftier intention than to feel your blood pump

faster through your toes, but even THAT you wouldn’t know to

speak about because you hadn’t got as far as making a decision to

intend a single thing, that’s just the kind of disengaged and free and

sans souci you were just then, for nothing pulled at you except

perhaps the need to breathe, which once you get the hang of it is

seldom terribly demanding.... Well.

In retrospect, you see that

without meaning to you’d found the perfect way to BE that day, for it

was warm enough to go without a jacket, clear enough for

cheerfulness, and quiet—there were noises, only mossy plopping

sounds from water-drops at play, just that, without the bother of

intending something waterish or damp-related, such as plotting

nasty weather—for example, sleet or floods or twenty feet of snow.

The water-drops in fact were (like you) having effortless amusement,

finding all enchanting that might wander into their awareness,

nothing judging, satisfaction popping in and out (and now that it’s a

memory a few months old, obscurely you’re reminded of how Miles

Davis played the trumpet, just as ready as the audience to be

surprised at what the instrument produced with his assistance, in the

way of pitch and timbre and intensity).

ASTONISHMENT

Aurora Borealis from Space--NASA

Oh lordy. Do you know what happened then? It’s something that

would NEVER have if you had planned it; such phenomena cannot

be MEANT because you’re not aware that they exist. It’s one of THE

ASTONISHMENTS, and only afterward can you identify or give a

name to it, because when you are in the midst of it your brain is

incapacitated by your rapture and your reverence and you suspect it

might be sacrilege to sully it with labels made of ordinary consonants

and common vowels, and the skritch your voice delivers trying to

articulate it verges on profanity. But as a poet, what have you to do

except find language for what’s holy, beautiful, astounding, and

resistant to description? So before you name it (if you say it now,

your hearers’ minds will close around an image formed in haste and

inerasable), you tell them what it looked like:

A parade of all the colors in a mother’s heart when first she sees her

newborn baby — only brighter, warmer, with such opulent

abundance in its light it couldn’t keep itself contained...

OR...

A Child's Garden of Verses

The sum of all the energy, the vastness of it spread like playing cards,

expended from the time a small child thinks he wants to plant a seed

until the flowers bloom and then the boy goes out with scissors

(carried safely, as his papa taught him), clips a couple dozen stems

and wraps them in wet newsprint, takes them to the back-porch door

and opens it but (clumsy with anticipation) lets the rusted spring,

which shouldn’t even work it’s that old, yank the wooden door back

shut (which, making such a satisfying clattering he laughs and hopes

it didn’t wake the baby)—all that energy so far, is everybody keeping

up? PLUS don’t forget the boost it got when all the planning and the

effort and the waiting and anticipation culminated in the

presentation of the mix of reds and pinks and greens and purples in

their many shapes—some daisylike, some curly-petaled, some like

velvet-covered nests and others tiny yellow buttons—to his mother,

as he watched her face so as to know if she were just pretending to be

pleased, but from the deep pool of the heart came happy tears, which

if somehow one could collect and bottle them would cure ill will

throughout the world... so add the energy from Mother’s

overflowing of emotion, and the child’s, to all the rest... that’s what I

saw that skipping-by-the-river afternoon, those colors and that

energy erupting from I couldn‘t tell you where but I will say the

name I dared to give to it: barenaked love.... authentic love,

undecorated, unadorned, unsaid... a true and honest love that is

enough no matter what it does or doesn’t do... a show, aurora

borealis–obvious, of love that makes you realize that what on

Monday you believed you knew of love is like a snowflake landing

on your mitten and you say about it, “This is snow,” and then you go

to bed, and when you wake, voila, it’s Tuesday’s blizzard. Oh.

Carl Larsson, Flowers on the Windowsill

AH, LIBERTY

That splendid energy is what you saw and wondered if perhaps it

might have ruined you for anything more subtle, ordinary,

commonplace, but that is not the case; in fact, do you know what?

Behind that spear or flash or momentary drenching, when the love

seemed all there was, you knew at once the drab and plain were

necessary for the brilliance to appear, like clear skies at a festival

when the balloons go up. How else could it have been precisely what

it ought to be, and permanently etched in consciousness... have set

aright what threatened peace, and steadied everything except what

absolutely HAD (though not without a sting) to be released?

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

Now understand, it sticks there in your memory, and the effect is not

to make the unremarkable less prepossessing than it started out.

Because, you see, there’s love on every street in every town, you just

don’t often notice it when colorlessly gowned and not barenaked. In

galoshes and a raincoat, love blends pleasantly, as Mrs. Piggle

Wiggle might if she were one of dozens on a bus, though if you paid

attention you’d see liveliness and magic snapping in the bright eyes.

What love does is fill you up with inspiration so you want to add a

splash of it to anything that isn’t dancing, shimmering, or spiced...

not discontented with the way things are, you simply have too much

by far to hold, and it is frisky, eager to be in the throng, and bold; it

strains and scrambles to be free, like twenty or a hundred frogs

you’ve got in pockets, cuffs, tucked in your shirt, beneath your hat,

stuck to your brow, and never have you wanted a companion more

than now.

LOVE LAUGHS OUT LOUD

So what you do is skip a little farther on the river path until, oh,

marvelous and happy day! There’s Christopher! You ask him, did he

see it too, barenaked love? He did, and he is awfully glad you named

it just exactly that, for he’s a bit more reticent than you. And then you

take his hand, and pretty soon you’re skipping, tripping over frogs

but keeping perfect time, the two of you, and laughing ’til you fear

you’ll (pee your pants), of which the thought brings on another tidal

wave of laughter—which, you are delighted to discover, is a rocket

launcher, flinging you into the fairyland you thought was strictly

fictional, where laughter is not only mandatory but beyond a doubt

the sweetest, most appealing, bright and blissful, silly, spilling-over

lovely, make-you-crazy thing to do for fun with someone who, like

you, has seen barenaked love appear out of the blue completely

unexpectedly that very serendipitous, amazing afternoon.

Faith in the Grand Scheme of Things

National Geographic

Forgive It First

I've looked every which way at this gift I'm 

giving you, in different modes, from many
vantage points, to find its wrinkles and to iron
them away, repair its flaws and make it
exquisite. And just when it looks smooth and
fine and irreproachable, the light shifts just a
little and it seems an ugly, injured thing, and I
begin again to try to become new.

I cultivate a ... garden ... in a light and sunny
corner....  crazy-frankenstein.com

The wind sweeps over the plains and blows

away the chaff and the brittle weeds and
lingering wisps of dry snow, and for a moment
it is peeled clean of all but new life starting
over. I cultivate a small but fruitful garden. I
plant it in a light and sunny corner and do my
best to keep it lovely and immaculate. It is my
pledge of faith in the grand scheme of things. I
dig and fertilize and sow and place the little I
control at the mercy of a force I can invoke
but not manipulate or modify. I must not even
try. Be the planter and the harvester, so says
the earth. Let God be God.

I create nothing, only express the multitude of
combinations of Creation, summoned,
gathered, surrendered into structure. I'll
never seal the gift; its flaws are invitations to
experience, and they are raw material for unearthly transformation.

What it is right now, I give with my whole
heart, not waiting for perfection; I haven't got
the time or tools to fix it right. Accept, forgive it
first, then sweep away the chaff. Plant fresher
seed and love it into life.

                     ~ Mary Campbell

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Published on the Fellowship in Faith Winter 2012 Website. 

Fellowship in Prayer is a non-profit private operating foundation. We publishSACRED JOURNEY, a multi-faith journal through which readers can explore the spiritual insights and experiences of religious leaders and practitioners around the world. We sponsor and support programs for adults and youth that promote prayer, meditation and service to foster a more just and peaceful world community. We connect people to pray together, exchange ideas and lend each other spiritual support through a global network via the internet.