My Personal Turkish Delight

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Peanut butter and banana toast and I go back a long way. I’ve probably mentioned this before. Now, fifty years later, the slathered combo atop a crispy base holds carbolicious delight…and comfort. You’re probably nodding in agreement iffin you have bitten into such wonder.

When I was a punk in short sleeve sweatshirts bananas were a delicacy. They were not on the priority list. But every now and then they’d show up. Surprise! As long as my mom did her dedicated run to the day-old bread store there was hope. Margarine and a metal bucket of peanut butter, will travel.

But bananas. The rationed yellow boomerangs. When they arrived on scene they wooed me to drop my blankie and toss my pacifier. A new comfort for this creature. Maybe a rite of passage even.

For some reason, my mom thought 12 cents a pound was too much to sacrifice back then. I had no idea. When she doled out dinero it rarely was for Chiquita. Even the commercial jingle didn’t phase her. Remember…”I am a Chiquita banana and I’m here to say.” Could be she thought the peels to dangerous.

Bananas, bananas, bananas—go ahead, say bananas enough times and you’ll at least smirk at how silly it sounds. Try it in Spanish too. Platanos, platanos, platanos. Actually, just about any word you say over and over becomes silly.

But anyway, why I’m a blathering on about a squishy substance sheathed in a sleek yellow holster?

It’s spiritual.

Just kidding.

It’s emotional attachment.

Possibly.

It’s intellectually stimulating.

Are you for real?

Okay, this is why…

“Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today.”

Monday Muse. Thank You Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Are we content with the content of our character? Or are we living skin deep, keeping up appearances and letting our hearts go to seed? Images are everywhere. Platitudes placed between the possibilities of communion with the humanity of it all.

We all have our character flaws, no? Our social media offers cover like a fig leaf of ‘likes’. Proximity becomes relative as our closest relatives see us as we are. Then there’s God who asks, rhetorically, where we are. God sees our skin and beyond, often without our acknowledgement. God sent Jesus to come look for us too.

I don’t know, I just want to honor Dr. King today. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Named after his father, who adopted the name of Martin Luther to honor his march of sorts. Martin Luther had white skin, by the way. He was the one who shook up the church back in the day. I’m sure he had character flaws too.

We still wish for a dream to come true. “That we would judge each other not by the color of our skin, but the content of our character.” It’s a process. There’s always room for character growth.

Thank you Dr. Martin Luther King.

Monday Muse 2020

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First Monday. We’re alive. I’m writing and you’re reading. Grace has lifted us once again. How shall we respond?

I write. It’s a compulsion. Sometimes words illumine a way out of a thought jungle. Worry; the great canopy of blocking the light of day. Vines, creepy-crawlies, and unknown sounds and furies. I gotta admit, and I have, that the older I get, the more I am prone to worry. Anxiety strangles the heart, mine at least.

The heart is the matter. What’s the matter with my heart? That question’s been dogging me for quite some time now. So, on the first Monday of this decade I broke out my bible app and entered ‘heart’ in the search box. The verses pertaining to the heart are many, and the conclusion is God cares about hearts. More than ‘likes’ on social media. More than the 24 hour news cycle. More than information and opinions and bowl games. If you have a bible app, look for yourself.

Listen to these verses with your heart…

“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

Philippians 4:6 and 7 The  Message.

What is the center of our humanness? Our hearts of course! God’s desire is for our hearts to be wide open with Him. This doesn’t come naturally to me. Often I get flamboozled into thinking I can’t trust God with my heart. The realization hits only after I’ve stonewalled God, and am deep into self-protection mode. Think of the reasoning in that! I need to protect myself from God? If there’s a need for protection then I might as well join AA (Atheists Anonymous). I’ve said before ‘If God isn’t good, what good is God?’

Make no mistake, if the verse says fret not, God knows our tendencies. God knows where our hiding places are and He is perfect at hide and seek. Once God even sent Jesus to look for us.

This I pray:

That our hearts will be flung open to the goodness of God. That like water to wine, worry will turn into praise because of Jesus, our only hope. Amen

Pressing On

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I can’t describe the journey and faith of Bill and Mary Sweeney, but here’s a post to read for yourself. So encouraging.

Unshakable Hope

Happy New Year!

I believe 2020 will be a great year.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’ve had ALS for twenty-three years. I’ve been on hospice for the last fifteen months, and in that time, I’ve had three close encounters with death. I don’t mean to make light of this, but I think you could say that I have one foot in the grave, and the other is on a banana peel. Knowing this, and reading that I’ve declared that 2020 is going to be a great year, you might be questioning the state of my mental health. I get it, but please hear me out.

I’ll admit that my mental health is not as good as it once was. I recently watched a movie for twenty minutes before realizing I’d seen it before. I don’t know if this is related to the ALS or just getting old…

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Happy New Year!

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I don’t want to abuse the metaphor of 2020 as a vision of the year to come. Honestly, metaphorically, most days I can’t see beyond the tip of my nose, with or without glasses. I glance back occasionally, but there is really “no use of looking up a dead horses arse” like coach Walker said after a Jr. High football loss. So, in effect, 2020, is like waking up to another good old new day by the grace of God.

Twenty some minutes into 2020, on our way back from festivities in Allegan, our Ford Flexed as a deer got all up in our grill. We hit it dead on. The deer timed it perfectly to square off with 55mph bullet. I didn’t swerve. No time to. The brakes were applied like a knee-jerk afterthought. Was the animal suicidal or just trying to beat a train of sorts? The doe, fortunately, didn’t come through the windshield. Instead, what happened, at least to those of us who were watching, couldn’t be described without the onset of nausea. All of the humans were startled, but safe; the deer…oh, deer.

Makes me wonder what startling things lay in the year ahead. I mean, last year many things got up in our grill. Think about it. If we have a heartbeat, life has its double edges, does it not? Last year was so 2019 with “Oh, the humanity” splayed throughout. I admit, this is from me, Forrest Grump (My self- imposed term of endearment from this holiday season), and I tend to see through a glass darkerly. The blessings arrive as surprises too, if I am paying attention. The daily reading from Frederick Buechner, January 1st, encourages listening to your life.

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Frederick Buechner

Not only that, but mercies are new each morning. Forrest Grump is double covered by the God of the universe. Grace and mercy. Mercy and grace. Speak Lord. Teach me to listen. Whether the deer is up in our grill, or a calming vision in a cornfield at dusk, help us God, to wend our way through 2020 with our hearts wide open.

Happy New Year!

Come Any Other Way (2012 Christmas revisited)

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Oh God, come any other way,

but not as a child.

 

Come in a space ship

so we can claim you as an alien,

as a figment of our imagination.

 

Wash up on earth’s shore

so we can claim you as a castaway

an unknown, scraggly and salt soaked.

 

Walk into town as a vagabond

so we can look and call authorities

to distance us.

 

Stand by the side of the road

so we can decide if your thumb up

is necessary for us to stop.

 

But please don’t come as a baby.

Don’t come and coo and cry

and take our breath away.

 

Don’t come as we did,

dependant and humble

and wrapped up tight.

 

Just don’t, don’t be so vulnerable

as a wonder from a womb

bathed in the liquid of humanity.

 

Don’t come as a child, please.

For then we would need to

hold you in our arms.

 

Don’t come as an infant

so innocent and small

for we might get emotional.

 

Don’t come as we once were

to become as we

should be.

 

Don’t come in this mysterious way

for then we might come

and adore You.

God Is

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I’m a bit lost.

Nothing new.

Walker Percy gets it. (Lost in the Cosmos)

It’s not that I don’t know where I’m going.

I see where I’ve been too.

Forth and back.

It’s the momentary.

The present places shift around.

Shift happens I suppose.

Here is there a lot of the time.

Neil Diamond sung about

Being neither here nor there…

“I am, I said, and no one heard,

Not even a chair.”

God’s Name isn’t ‘I Was’.

God’s Name isn’t ‘I’m going to be’.

God’s name is ‘I Am’.

Actually ‘I Am that I Am’.

This echo reached all the way to me.

Here. Now. Thank God.