Very God of Very God

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Aunt Eva

            Aunt Eva lived in a small addition attached to Uncle Wilfred and Aunt Dorothy’s grey stucco farmhouse.  She lived alone. But with her eight nieces and nephews next door and the steady stream of piano students, never alone. 

            Her black hair was sprinkled with hints of gray and rolled into a tight sausage that circled the back of her neck.  It must have been the hip style in the Holiness Movement because my mother wore hers the same.  I remember one time being surprised to see Aunt Eva comb her hair out.  It fell halfway down her back—thin, with a hint of a wave.  She washed it with raw egg.

            Every Tuesday, I walked from my one-room school in the Canadian countryside to Aunt Eva’s for a fifty-cent piano lesson.  It was a good deal for an hour of piano, tea, and cookies.  I’m not sure if she wasn’t a good teacher, or if I was just a poor student, but I never learned to read music very well.  I had a good ear and would memorize those Royal Conservatory pieces, then play, looking at the sheet music, pretending to sight-read.  She probably wasn’t fooled, especially when I’d improvise, though she never seemed to mind my own special touches.  We sat together at an old upright.  On top of the piano sat a cherished china figurine of Liberace at his piano.  She admired him.

Sometimes in the winter, my hands would be so cold she’d have me warm them by the old wood stove until I could move them enough to manipulate the piano keys.  They were never quite warm enough for scales and arpeggios, however.  That required too much discipline and practice.

            She didn’t hit me on the fingers like one of the nuns I’d heard of in town, and she never stopped me from expressing my own voice in music.  However, I never did place in piano at the local music festival. My performances were rather “individual.”  The adjudicator’s remarks always included things like: “A nice start, but . . .”  or “Good expression, but . . .”  Regardless, Aunt Eva was proud of her students, and she was always proud of me.

            She had never married.  Eva appeared content the way she was except for the fact that she had been “dying” all her life.  I wouldn’t say she was a hypochondriac, just fearful and addicted to worry.  As a young girl, she’d contracted scarlet fever, and whether there were real and actual symptoms left over from that, I don’t know.  But, at times, she was convinced death was near and would panic. Who knows what she was really feeling, but I think perhaps I’ve inherited her disorder. 

            Since we assumed Aunt Eva was perfectly content with her multitude of relatives, piano students, and church acquaintances, it came as quite a shock when, with blushing cheeks, she announced that she was to be married.  To Bill.  She was sixty-three.

            Bill was a man of great patience, I guess, for he had asked her thirty years before.  They were married in our little church in town, and there never was a more radiant bride.  Aunt Eva twinkled!  Not a small thing at sixty-three.

            I noticed a remarkable change in my aunt.  For one thing, she appeared softer around the edges as if she was always moving in diffused light.  She loved and was loved.  It washed over her in waves of smiles and blushes and a knowing look. 

            Bill and Eva were married for about ten years when the car accident happened.  I don’t know whose fault it was—just one of those things.  But Eva went down hill over the next couple of years.  She weakened.  I visited her in the hospital, and my sisters and I sang some hymns.  She smiled for us, but continued wasting away.  I think she had stopped “dying” for those twelve good years with Bill, but at the age of seventy-five, she really did die. 

            I miss Aunt Eva’s wonderful brown sugar candy.  I miss being served tea in a fancy cup and saucer.  I miss the way she pronounced the “O’s” in the word “cookie” like “cool.”  She loved music.  She loved God.  She loved us, and she really loved Bill.  When I’m sixty-three I hope I won’t be afraid to try something new—to take a radical step, to stop dying and live.  And maybe even twinkle.

           

A Prayer

I almost feel guilty going about my normal day,
rearranging furniture,
juicing,
picking up my organics,
cruising over in my Japanese-made Honda to scour the plenty on the shelves at Trader Joe's.
With so much suffering, raw and fresh,
I feel like I should be weeping,
weeping and not stopping;
but these are not my immediate family,
their faces are not familiar.
Yet seeing homes and cars and real and desperate people
swept away as nothing
to become the flotsam of yet another disaster,
another media event,
how can my heart not ache deep and long for
the loss, the agony, the torrent of suffering.
Broken world, shaking and quaking,
moaning, crying out for redemption:  Oh, God
bring solace to those caught in the crosshairs of this eternal tension.

LG 12 Mar. 2011

Peach-pink, gold molten,
blue wisps of breath,
slivers of molecule--
a sun rising, while I am unable
or unwilling--
tucked in my bed.
Waving and crackling
tired few leaves
call the morning,
hanging on by tiny desperate strands
for one more
winter morning.

When . . .

When does purpose and drive become arrogance?

When does surrender to God’s will bump up against the kind of giving up that breeds hopelessness?

When is faith presumption?

When is humility just feeling a lack of self-worth?

And when does analysis become pure criticism?

To think—to be—such a mix of dark and light, of bristle and silk.

The will wobbles back and forth between leaning in and running away, between giving up and holding tight fists.

Oh God, are we performing empty rituals, cup and bread, songs and sermons, trying to find meaning when there is none,

. . . trying to convince the world and ourselves we have found all the answers?  When we don’t even know all the questions.

If there is meaning,

If there is purpose,

Why are there so many barriers, the path so thorny?  Why the clouds and chaos?

As days flit away, filled up with critiques and commas, baking and brooding, there is a kind of desperation, a deep searching for You.

What a black heart I must have to have journeyed so long

and come only so far.

When does doubt yield to wonder?  Wonder to glory?

~Lilly Green 2-2011

Everywhere Tall Trees



The stretch to the sun, the stretch to the center of the earth, and the sheltering cool in between.  Secret hidden places for treasures and firm holding branches—houses in the air.  Feathery leaves trap mysteries in my mind and catapult them into the future. 

Rows of stately soldiers guard country roads.  Lonely isolates in flowering meadows stand moody, marking time in aloneness.  Companion trees link arms with knowing glances, intimate breathings—

sharing ground, sharing air.

Everywhere trees.

Solid oaks, assertive with chests puffed, mock gale winds.  Supple birches, evanescent green and whispery white, sway and flex with storms.  Up on the mountain, pines all buffed up bristly, dare intrusion, while maples filled with dripping sweets flaunt green today and fire red with tomorrow’s frost.  Down by the river, willows droop with tears from countless sorrows, long sucking fingers in the dirt.  Vain wooden alders hover close, leaning to the water’s edge to catch a glimpse reflected in dark deeps.

My apple tree offers sweet, sometimes wormy, fruit and a lofty perch.  I retreat to write and meditate,

pleading mother-calls unheeded.  I weave dreams in the branches and trust secrets to the leaves that

no one else would understand.

On hot, steamy days, I hop shadow to shadow to cool my feet and cool my head. 

Barefoot steps quick quick on hot packed dirt, but slow to freeze frame under sheltering tall trees,

the long dance home in desperate darts and lingerings.

Aged elm branches spread a welcome for my childish floors and walls, my odds and ends. 

Barely a whimper—long dagger nails pierce—sacrificial lamb. 

I homestead in crooks and climbs with soda crackers and Jell-O tea—

sweet communion. 

Barked, brawny arms hold the rope that swings my feet to tippy touch the lowest leaves.  Back and forth and back and forth with pumping legs and flagging hair, then jump!  I’m flying!  I land with a thud, all laughter and grass stains.  Then, up again.  I wind and wind and wind.  Branches groan.  I twirl and twirl and twirl,

then stumble as with drunken pleasure.

Everywhere trees.  Leaves pressed brittle, photos captured, admiring peaceful pauses taken in busy days—

I breathe the memory and the now.



All Roads Lead to Seven

I was raised to believe that three plus four equals seven.  And even six plus one, and two plus five.  As I got older and studied more, it became clear to me that not only did twenty-eight divided by four equal seven, but I was amazed at the depth of my understanding when I learned that seventy divided by ten equals seven, and even more so that two hundred and eighty-one point four divided by forty point two equals, you guessed it, seven!

Then I met a man, an erudite man, an articulate man.  He told me that seven was equal to one plus thirty.  He told me that sometimes three plus three equals seven, and in some parts of the world, if you wear orange robes and hum, even negative ten times two equals seven.  After all, all roads lead to seven. 

He was very convincing, and I could see that my narrow view on life was rather arrogant.  Did I think that my seven totals were superior to someone else’s?  There are good, moral people who believe as I do, but certainly, there are some really good, moral people who have different ways of arriving at the same outcome. 

I was very satisfied in my new belief system and spread the word whenever I could, particularly among the “old school,” who still clung to their archaic beliefs.  I was very satisfied, that is, until the day I came to bake bread for the local universalist center.  It was a necessary act, a compassionate act, a feed-the-hungry act.  The recipe called for seven cups of flour.  Since all roads lead to seven, I felt free indeed to place in my mixer twenty plus six cups of organic whole wheat flour.  Because I was so liberated with sevens, I felt free indeed to be liberal with my threes and my fours, and even my fives.  So with all my ingredients accounted for, I mixed up my bread and set it in a warm, cozy place to rise while I read my book about how all prophets of seven are equally valid, equally holy, and entitled to my worship.  How elated I felt that I had found this new light.  But my bread did not rise.  I waited and waited, and still it did not rise.  I left it in the warm oven overnight, and in the morning it still had not risen a smidgen.  It even began to smell a bit funny. 

When I asked the erudite man, the articulate man, he assured me that I was still on the right path, but I was not called to make bread.  Oh, well, that made sense.  Maybe I was supposed to feed the hungry with jam.  So I bought two plus one pounds of fruit and added eleven times forty-four cups of thickener; after all, all roads lead to seven.  When I checked my simmering jam on the stove, I couldn’t even lift the lid off the pot.  The mixture had solidified into one unyielding mass and had begun to burn on the bottom.  I couldn’t imagine what was wrong.

Just then, an old friend knocked on the door.  She had come by to share with me some of her bread and homemade preserves.  “How is it yours turned out so well when I used the same recipes,” I asked, pouring our tea.

“Oh, but you didn’t use the same recipe,” she said.  “A recipe is a true statement of the proportions necessary to get the proper outcome.  A “seven” is a particular truth, not open to revision.  You can’t just change what a seven means and hope to end well.”

“But the erudite man . . .”

“There is a wisdom of this world, which is foolishness to the Lord of the Sevens.  It may seem narrow to restrict your options, but the way is indeed narrow that leads to truth,” she said.

“May I have seconds,” I said.

Well, I learned an important lesson that day:  All roads do not lead to seven, and that’s the gospel truth!