Hi Elaine, At Carolyn’s house there is a large box of family photos. Susan, Ellen, and I all care about them, but none of us is really interested in being the caretaker of them.  Would you like to take on that duty? If so, we will gladly package and ship them to you . .  . what do you think?  Love you, Beth

Until last November, my family had nine first cousins, seven girls and two boys, dotting the map from Utah to Florida. Through a tragic car accident, cousin Carolyn abruptly left her three sisters, two step-sons and a host of nieces, a nephew, step-grands, relatives and friends.

Faith helps. Time helps. But nothing can replace the loved one we have lost. Lost is an common word we use when someone dies. Yes, I will be the keeper. Send me the box.

“How many people have been born, lived rich loving lives, laughed and wept, been part of creation and are now forgotten, unremembered by anybody walking on earth today?” wondered Madeleine L’Engle as her mother was slipping away because of dementia.

Throughout our lives  we gather, save and curate a variety of  objects that are useful or enjoyable or meaningful to us. And into our households most of us assimilate a hodge podge of family items that have been christened heirlooms.  Becoming the keeper of the possessions of our forbears helps keep our heritage alive.

heir + loom (Middle English)
heir = ‘heres’ (as in heredity), something passed down
loom = from ‘lome’ or ‘allame’, a weaving tool , a farm implement, to take shape or the finished product after a gradual process

My mother is still living but we are gradually losing her because of Alzheimer’s Disease. Together we have sorted through almost every object, photograph and letter, but now only my sisters and I can verify that the cloth doll she played with was named “Reagan”.

We three have the fullest memory of our mother among anyone still living, yet it is fragmentary. Who will tell her stories now?  Who will be the keeper of mine?

                    

“I would like to believe that the Creator still remembers all of my mother, knows and cares for the [essence] of her and is still teaching her and helping her to grow into the self he created her to be, her integrated redeemed self.” 

Madeleine L’Engle, Summer of the Great-Grandmother, p. 233

My creative life has been shaped by a number of writers and musicians and painters that I will never match in talent or achievement. One of my literary kindred hearts is Madeleine L’Engle.

I read her works of fiction as a pre-teen, then a parent, and finally began exploring her non-fiction work through Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.

Her words spoke to me during a time when I was ready to give up on writing . After only moderate commercial interest in my magazine articles, columns, study booklets or my first (and only to date) trade book, I was not embracing the “near-miss” as Sarah Lewis calls the pursuit of mastery over success.

My first thought of becoming a writer was planted by my second grade teacher, who began sending my compositions home with notes about my artistic potential. Starting in third grade, my piano teacher/choir director began echoing those affirmations, continuing to encourage me through high school and college.  (I will return to them in a future post).

I have kept several childhood writings for half a century, because I feel they reflect my truest, unedited self. Last summer I received some of my dad’s personal files that my sisters thought I might want . I was astounded that my dad saved it, since no one person discouraged me more about the vocation of journalism.

My Father

My father is good humored, sweet and proud of his work. He’s black-headed with blue eyes, glasses and a sweet touch of curiosity. That’s why I have faith and love in him. There’s nothing but love in his heart.

Madeleine L’Engle’s The Crosswicks Journals I-V were published between 1972 and 1989. They probably mean more to me because they capture the volatile season of cultural, political and theological changes as I was coming to faith and coming of age. But they also encourage me to continue living life fully.

Madeleine was “my age” now, looking back on her marriage, her family life and her arduous creative journey. “To be half a century plus is wonderfully exciting” she wrote, “because I haven’t left any of my past and I’m free to stand on the rock of all that the past has taught me as I look towards the future.” (Circle of Quiet, p. 106).

After ten years of rejection slips (including A Wrinkle in Time), even her husband began questioning if she should put herself in the same company of great writers like Dostoevsky or painters like Van Gogh (who sold exactly one painting during his lifetime).

She pushed back, “It has nothing to do with comparing degrees of talent and everything to do with a way of looking at the universe . . . Dostoevsky is a giant; I look up to him; I sit at his feet; perhaps I will be able to learn something from him, but we do face the same direction no matter how great his stride, how small mine.“

Thank God for giants like Madeleine L’ Engle, Mrs. Rector and Mrs. Warren.

Thirty five years ago, I was a guest in the home of a lady whose den had a lovely, low table with a giant bowl of buttons in the center. I’m a toucher  so I welcomed  her invitation to dip my hands into that delicious assortment of textures, shapes and colors. Her grandparents had owned one of  the historic American button manufacturing companies, so the bowl of generations-old buttons was a symbole for her family.

Several years later, my mother was culling through her three-legged sewing notions bucket and I spied a big plastic box of old buttons. “Where did those come from?” I exclaimed, as the memory of the giant button bowl rushed over me.

“I’m not sure why I’ve kept them all these years” she admitted. “Some are from little dresses you girls wore, some were on my old formals or sweaters, and these came off of one of Honey’s coats (her mother) that I loved . . . here are some buttons off of Daddy’s Navy pea coat.” It turned out that there were even buttons of Grandmother Curry’s (my great grandmother), who had given her the vintage wooden cabinet.

I boldly asked if I could have them, and whisked them away before she could change her mind!  As soon as I returned home, I began gathering up the buttons in my sewing kit. I realized that I had quite a collection myself, between extra or lost buttons and a brief season of sewing children’s clothes and a few other ill-conceived projects.

I certainly didn’t have enough buttons to fill a large wooden bowl, but I found a smaller bowl that captured the character of what my mind had been incubating.

My button bowl contains tangible artifacts of the everyday lives of five generations. They were once attached to the clothing that covered those souls who came before me and shaped who I am today.

My young friend, Anna, was one of the first who recognized the wonder of the button bowl. She was barely three, yet carefully picked up each button, and examined it with a magnifying glass, then began sorting them by color or texture or material.

Over a dozen years, I have observed a variety of button rituals, mostly by children, a few curious adults and my grandson who still occasionally holds the spyglass against his magnified eye while asking the origin of a “family button”.

The button bowl has become another everyday ebenezer, a symbole of God’s faithfulness in very ordinary, daily ways. These are the ones I’m most prone to overlook.

[Listen here: http://congregationalsongs.com/downloads/fill-thou-my-life/]

Fill Thou my life, O Lord, my God,
In every part with praise,
That my whole being may proclaim
Thy being and Thy ways.

Not for the lip of praise alone,
Nor e’en the praising heart,
I ask, but for a life made up
Of praise in every part.

Praise in the common things of life,
Its goings out and in,
Praise in each duty and each deed,
However small and mean.

Fill every part of me with praise;
Let all my being speak
Of Thee and of Thy love, O Lord,
Poor though I be, and weak.

So shalt Thou, Lord, from me, e’en me
Receive the glory due,
And so shall I begin on earth
The song forever new.

So shall no part of day or night
From sacredness be free:
But all my life, in every step,
Be fellowship with Thee.

Words by Horatius Bonar (1866). Music by Jeff Bourque. Copyright 2004 Universal Music/Cumberland Belle Music.

I first heard of art historian Sarah Lewis through her TED Talk “Pursuit of Mastery.” Her CAT that day was (cause the audience to) embrace the near-win. That phrase strongly resonated with me and made me remember my first trophy–my only trophy–in a lifetime of near-wins.

Lewis pointed out that success is just “an event, a moment in time and a label that the world confers upon you”  . . . what we continue to celebrate is creativity and mastery,  “pursuing a kind of excellence in obscurity.” Mastery is not the same as excellence or success. It is not a commitment to a goal but a constant pursuit.

I was so struck by that eleven minute talk that I got some chalk and wrote mastery: excellence in obscurity on my desk (made from a reclaimed church door with chalkboard paint panels on the desktop).

Next I went digging around for that old softball trophy and placed it right where my eye will catch it everyday.  I went on to read Lewis’ book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, which impresses the importance of grit and creative practice. The near-win, she writes, changes our focus to consider how we plan to attain what lies in our sights but out of reach. Failure is not the outcome but the refused attempt.

                                                        Elaine Everett 1968 “Most Improved Player”

“All those who do more than compete, who strive for mastery, play on a field that exists largely within.” Sarah Lewis

[April 21, 2014 Ted Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_lewis_embrace_the_near_win?language=en]

Children are naturally curious and imaginative, especially when invited to play, experiment and discover. Adults have difficulty retaining a child-like wonder that doesn’t care what others think about what they are currently interested in.

Sir Ken Robinson defines creativity as “original ideas that have value,” but cautions that we won’t come up with anything original if we aren’t prepared to be wrong. Perhaps this one fact explains why most adults do not become more creative. “We are educated” he said, “to become good workers not creative thinkers.”

I’ve always been a curious person, even a wonk in areas that interest (and sometimes obsess) me. Curious people carefully attend to the intriguing, unusual and remarkable events transpiring around them. They believe that every moment is ripe with opportunity! Ultimately, curiosity is chasing a moment of interest and turning it into a moment of understanding.

Resourcefulness, ingenuity and creativity require us to adopt a rhythm–a practical and powerful rule of life–that makes a space to explore and experiment and contemplate and dream in all directions . . . behind you, before you and beyond you.

P.S. I hear that little voice arguing “I don’t have time!” Someone once told me that you’ll never find time–you have to make time.

“Life is not made of the dreams we dream but the choices we make.” Joseph Stowell

English contains three moods: 1) the indicative (factual) 2) the imperative (commands) and 3) the subjunctive (non-factual).

The indicative mood states “I am writing a book.”  The imperative directs “Please write a compelling book.” The subjunctive envisions “I might write a book about elves.”

Vietnamese does not possess the subjunctive mood, only the fact of what is or what was. A language with no words for regret or what ifs from the past may sound good at first . . . but without the subjunctive mood, we would also lack the words to imagine what could be or what should be in the future.

Living in the past will not make us more resilient, but reflecting on the past–what might have been or what should have been–comes along with the ability to ponder what could be or what will  be in the future.

If we want to discover how the world could be different or better tomorrow, we must include the stories of our past experiences. In To Be Told, Dan Allender describes how to read your life as God has written it and challenges you to begin forging perspective by learning a better way to read your “tragedies”.

He says that our past was given, was written for us by the “odd hand of God” before we were born (Psalm 139:16); yet mysteriously, my future is yet unnamed and “I am frighteningly free to write as I desire because God has written me to be fully responsible for my story.”

[This post was inspired after hearing the Ted Talk “Grammar, Identity and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive” during the reading of To Be Told.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS516US516&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=ted%20talk%20the%20subjunctive]

On Valentine’s Eve, my husband surprised me with tickets to Abbey Road LIVE! a Beatle’s cover band playing in Nashville. Overall, the audience was young, but all together we belted out those half-century old lyrics. It took me right back to 1965 when I saw “The Beatles Show” during their second U.S. tour. I can still envision my eight-year-old self in the balcony, screaming and raising my hands when Paul and John waved at my sister and me after singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” . . .

Unfortunately our “experiencing selves” cannot accurately archive the stories our “remembering selves” tell and retell. Thanks to the internet, I’ve discovered that they didn’t even sing their first #1 hit, and that the $5 matinee and evening shows included a dozen songs lasting only 35 minutes. Yes, it’s been proven that our emotional archives are much richer than our mental ones (you can listen here http://youtu.be/awFqISIeNtE).

If we can’t trust our memories, how can we pass them down to others more accurately?

Preserve the essentials. Rewinding much farther (1757), consider Robert Robinson, the twenty-two year old pastor and hymnist who wrote about his new found faith in Christ: “Come thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.” After more than 250 years, most arrangements have dropped one critical section of the original text:

“Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’m come; and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God; He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.”

Raise my . . . what? It’s understandable why most modern hymnals and artists like Jars of Clay and Michael Card have changed those obscure words to: “Hitherto thy love has blessed me, Thou has brought me to this place; And I know Thy hand will bring me safely home by Thy good grace.”  (E. Margaret Clarkson’s adaptation first deleted this valuable biblical concept for post-modern followers of Christ in 1973).

Recognize where your trust lies. From childhood, God had raised up a faithful priest who did according to what was in His heart and mind. Israel went out in battle against the Philistines at Ebenezer. When they were defeated badly the elders brought the Ark of the Covenant there, believing “it [the ark] may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.” (1 Samuel 4:3). Not only were they defeated again, but the Philistines captured the ark of God. Things didn’t go well for the Philistines either, and it only took them seven months to return the ark “with a guilt offering that would adequately give glory to the God of Israel” (1 Samuel 6). For Israel, it took twenty years and a lot more suffering to finally return to the Lord for help. How have you seen this pattern play out in your life or career?

Depend on God alone. When Samuel saw that they were serious about returning to God as their lone source of deliverance, he told them to first put away everything else in which they had put their confidence. Afterward he prayed for them continuously, and the Lord answered by“thundering with a mighty sound . . . and threw the Philistines into confusion so they were defeated before Israel.” (1 Samuel 7) That must have been a life changing and unforgettable experience! Looking back, what things have you tried out to make things turn out the way you want? How have you seen the Lord fight for you?

Commemorate the notable. “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer [stone of help]; for he said, ‘Till now the LORD has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12). Samuel discerned the limits of the human memory and chose a great stone, stood it up on the battlefield and named it “Ebenezer” as a perpetual reminder of God’s victory as well as all their self-inflicted failures. Tracing the last two or three decades, can you see how the Lord has helped you even when you didn’t ask? Even when you went the other way?

Look back but move forward. Ask God to point you to tangible objects that will serve as visible “Ebenezers” of His mercy and grace toward you. A compass, a sand clock, a magnifying glass, a ring, a charm bracelet . . . At the end of January, I found a miniature bench to keep on my desk as a reminder that God has waited with me through some long, hard decisions. If God has helped us “until now” we can expect that He will also help us today.

Ebenezers not only build your own faith, but cultivate expectation and provide conversation starters for sharing our stories of how the Gospel directs our past, present and future. What internal or external “battles” are you facing at this moment? Jesus welcomes your prayers and will act for you out of his loving purposes for you and the world.

Dear Jesus, You did everything needed to make a way for me to come to you and for everything I need in life. The Bible traces your purposes as well as your compassion, so it’s my unbelief and pride in my own strength that are behind so many failures in my life. Thank you for coming to me, through the stories of two friends who related their new found faith in You. Give me fresh ways  to pass them on to my friends, my children and my grandchildren. Amen.

“Praise is a form of sanity where you suspend thought of the future and dwell in the eternal now, lifting up God as the center.” Jack Miller, Saving Grace