Bonnie Recovery

Teaching, Preaching, and Praying

Daniel and I continue to relish our life these days and to be deeply appreciative for all we have and what we have learned.  Living ocean front brings its own joys each day.  Early in the week the Atlantic was as stormy as I’ve seen it (none of that D.C. snow stuff here.) Most days it is sunny and sometimes in the 60’s.   Today is gray, but still awesome.  They say we’ll have snow overnight.  We love being close to the grandchildren, though it makes us miss Jackson in Cambridge even more sometime.

Tomorrow we are off to the Pollards for Valentine’s Day with all the grandparents.  It is Zac’s last basketball game.  In a month he starts baseball again and Luc returns to spring soccer.  Much kiddo watching ahead for spring.  Today I was making brownies and sausage Valentines (yes Valentines ... sausage with a bit of egg baked in heart shaped muffin “tin” -- actually a heavy iron skillet of a thing I bought in Pennsylvania -- you know how the PA Dutch love those hearts.  Beanie has kept it for me for forty years and now that she is moving out of her house, it came to rest in mine.)  Lucas in particular loves sausage and “pigs in a blanket”; tomorrow he’ll have sausage valentines in those pancakes.  Ah, GrandBe.

Daniel is doing well.  He has been upgrading us to Snow Leopard and moving all my PC files from my old laptop to my shiny MacPro.  He is sleeping well and walking every day on the beach.  Tonight we are heading out to celebrate his 62nd birthday (last Wednesday) at our favorite French restaurant (yes, Oak Island has a FRENCH restaurant; the same place where we went for my birthday).  We gave each other our gas stove for Christmas and birthdays.

For celebrating his birthday all year,  I am committed to his having healthier foods.  Oprah has done shows where 40 year old women committed to sex everyday for their husband’s 40th.  I do remember being 40!  Ah. Now that we are in our 60’s, I guess oatmeal is more realistic??!!   I make sure to have oatmeal bars to snack on all the time.  Today's were made with bananas, blueberries, and cranberries.  yummy.  Last night I made a fine kale dish  combining recipes from Bobby Flay and Mark Bittman to make “Tuscan Kale.”  uhmmm.  Daniel is also cooking.  He has taken his BBQ pulled pork to new heights.  We are taking the last of it to Jen’s for the pre-game Valentine feast.  More cooking for him next week.

I’m continuing my book research reading memoirs of survivors.  I read through each book, scanning content I might use or quote, OCR’ing it and moving it into Evernote with lots of “tags.”  Daniel has me well set up and I find the technology so transparent, I can concentrate on thought.  I’m learning at many levels.  I’ve been concerned about writing for people with “chronic illness” when I know so little of other diseases.  Yes, I have had kidney failure and dialysis; yes I have taken insulin injections multiple times for high sugar in my blood,  but what is the experience of chronic diabetes?  I’m peeking into others’ experiences.

Mostly my past week has revolved around my mission at St. Philips.  I taught the Bible Class on Isaiah 58 on Wednesday.  I have good handouts I will be posting when I have made a bit of revision given what I learned about how “self explanatory” they are.  Look for that by Monday.

I’ve finished the written draft of my Ash Wed sermon (for services at 7am and 6pm on Wed the 17th).  I’m just about able to speak the whole thing without notes.  I will be posting that on Ash Wed, probably in the afternoon if I don’t crash in a nap before the evening service.  We shall see what my energy level is.  The day I taught the Bible Class, I was hyper-hyper.  Little sleep the night before and no nap afterward.  I learned a long time ago to work up my energy levels for special presentations like that; it is a habit now I don’t even realize I’m doing.  Almost like the effects of hypnosis.  I expect some of tha thigh energy will happen all day on the 17th.

The weekend of April 17th I’m leading a weekend retreat for my new religious order, the Daughters of the King.  There will be about a dozen daughters attending at our diocese ocean front conference center.  I am looking forward to that.

I feel gratified especially to have these three experiences in succession:  teaching, preaching, and praying.  These are the gifts I feel God has given me for the good of the Church.  This time last year I was unable to leave the house to attend Sunday Eucharist.  (The joy of that was in meeting the wonderful people who brought Eucharist to me on Sunday.)  Now I am being asked to contribute and in all the ways I have the talents to do.  SUCH JOY I CANNOT REALLY DESCRIBE.  Maybe more than ocean, grandchildren, Daniel, or book, right now I’m finding joy in the prospect and doing of this.  What a lucky person I am!

I am so fortunate because I have good friends like you.  In reading the blog for the book, I noticed people I hadn’t talked to since Cambridge.  Donna was a key person there.  Then lo and behold, Donna leaves another post.  Thank you Donna.  THANK YOU EVERYBODY!

I’ve been wanting to get onto Facebook to check out Betsy’s postings.  I’ve tried a couple of times, but hadn’t been able to get an account successfully (long story).  Today I tried again.  WOW; it worked immediately and flawlesly.  Facebook looked at my address book and sent messages to many, many people asking them to confirm their “friendship” with me.  Within 20 minutes I was confirmed by almost 50 people.  I was astounded.  I’ve had some messages from people I haven’t heard from in SO long.  I hear I also have postings on my “wall”; I’ll have to figure out what that it.  Welcome to the online world of social networking, Bonnie!  I think I have hesitated about social networking sites, not wanting Facebook to substitute for more thoughtful blog postings.  I do like the connection to more people and think my membership will be good for me.  What is your experience with social networking?

Look for more postings in the next week.  I seem to be in a creative/expansive mood now (more about my “mood adventures” too.

THANK YOU for hanging with us.  You mean so much to us.

Bonnie for BanD

Note upon returning from birthday dinner.  Oh my, food so good.  And when we left is was indeed snowing, large wet flakes.  Daniel was thoughtful enough to cover my stair lift chair when we left.  Thank you, Daniel.  The snow won’t stick, but it was beautiful to see tonight.  It’s my first snow at the beach.

Ashes, Passion for Sharing Grace (and the effects of high dose Prednisone)

Bonnie spoke from the front of the church tonight.  Ash Wednesday is a space on the calendar she has held with deep regard for many years.  Bonnie has been thinking about being human, and being ashes since her sister died a decade ago.  Statistically speaking, Bonnie has only had about one year to live, for the last 7 years.   She split her time between hospitals and classes in divinity school.  Talk about using ontological design to prepare to speak about being and ashes!

Since the New Year I have watched Bonnie think, write, meditate and sleep on how she can share with her fellow congregants what she has learning about Being and Ashes. 

It was a strange experience having Bonnie act as my minister and telling a church full of people about what she has learned being in rooms we shared.   Bonnie attend a different concert than the one I heard.  But I have always been in a different role / listening than the ones into which Bonnie has been cast. 

For twenty three years I have watched Bonnie as a rhetorician and public speaker.  Bonnie says that a rhetorician adjusts ideas to people, and people to ideas.

Tonight I saw the ideas of Being and Ashes have altered Bonnie; both as a being and as a speaker. 

Bonnie spoke with passion and a sort of zeal I have rarely seen in her.  While the logic of her talk was well laid out, her passion and manner of speaking had an urgency, even a sense of breathlessness I do not recall in her previous talks.  Even speaking from the pulpit in the chapel at the Episcopal Divinity School, knowing that she was likely to be dead by the end of the school year, she was more measured. 

Tonight, it was as if she was having difficulty keeping her balance as she moved through the landscape of her talk.  

In the last weeks of jazz pianist Bill Evan's life, he played with a particular intensity, like a light bulb that has been hit, and suddenly burns brighter before going out.  

I do not know if the high doses of Prednisone Bonnie has been taking to keep her donor's immune system in check contributed to the intensity with which she spoke.  Or is it some sense of urgency to share a sense of Grace that is available for the grasping?

Whatever the alchemy, it seems that Bonnie and the spirit that moved her to speak found their audience in the church. 

Who knows who you marry, when you say "I do".   Indeed, who really knows who we are and what illuminates us?

Daniel for BanD

Remember that You are Dust

Here a .pdf of yesterday's Ash Wednesday sermon. Download BJ Return Sermon v5

Daniel’s post, [Feb 18th, below] written in the beautiful way that only Daniel can, says so much of what my experience of Ash Wednesday was.  I might have said Ash Wednesday is special to me.  Daniel gets it right:  “Ash Wednesday is a space on the calendar she has held with deep regard for many years.”  I am attaching the sermon and some other stuff I’ve done recently at St. Philips later in this post. 

I had asked Fr Barry if I could do a sermon during Advent; you know that I LOVE the Advent Season like no other.  That didn’t work out, but he asked if I would like to speak at the Ash Wednesday services at 7am and 6pm.  I supposed he might have thought that I would have something appropriate to say given my eight years of wrestling with the Angel Death.   Indeed.  I had too much to say in one sermon.  For me the sermon became my opportunity to say ALL I’d learned about Ash Wednesday, death, life, and GOD.  In addition, I wanted to tell about what I have learned about the practice of Lent at EDS and with my Jesuit Spiritual Mentor, the other Fr. Barry in my life, William Barry, S.J.   Well then too, I wanted to encourage parishioners to come to the Maundy Thursday service just before Easter.  The Thursday service is not well attended at St. Philips. We have a huge Wednesday night service -- a wondrous, dramatic Tenebrae service of reading and music.

With all this, my sermon went over twenty minutes.  That is generally a no-no in the Episcopal Church.  Fr. Barry was kind about it.  And I have to say that every person in the room seemed to be with me each moment.  I could feel that my messages were going from my heart to theirs and back to me.  It was the first time I had preached to the whole congregation and people were moved.  So for this time, I felt that my overstepping time boundaries was a good thing but not something to be repeated.

I have already written here about my history with Ash Wednesday.  It started for me in 1999 when Daniel was doing full time hospice with Mom in Houston and I flew there each Friday evening, returning to work on Tuesday morning.   The Palm leaves from Easter of the previous year are burned to create this year’s ash.  My sister had died on or about the previous Palm Sunday.  Facing the imminent death of Mom (3 days after that Ash Wednesday) the world took on a certain coherence of spirit for me for me the Ash Wednesday of 1999.  I call 1999 my year of 4 funerals and a wedding (Jennifer's).  

(I wrote about my history of Ash Wednesday and how it became special to me.  That posting can be found at this link:   If you link there, you’ll get the March posts, beginning with the 31st and you’ll need to scroll down to March 1.)

I hope that you find the sermon meaningful to read as I found it meaningful to write and deliver. That’s the way it is for me these days. I think some of this cosmic stuff in everyday life is hitting Daniel too.  I'll let him speak for himself, though.

Thanks for hanging out here and listening.

Love to you and the best of Lenten seasons for those who are into it; I’m wishing everyone a fine early spring of pondering their cosmic life and world.

Bonnie for BanD

POST SCRIPT  (Yes, I’m really into “one more thing” these days.)

Here are a couple of pdf attachments from my teaching Isaiah 58 in the Bible class on Feb 10.

A textual analysis of Isaiah 58: Download BJ Handout Isaiah 58 commentary.  It uses color type to show the parallel structures in Third Isaiah’s poetry.  You’ll probably find you have to look at it a while and find the matching colors to get the point.  The goal of that analysis is to help you build a better appreciate of Hebrew poetry as well as to encounter the message of Isaiah 58 for Lent -- God: “this is the fast I chose.”  One of the members of the class wrote a wonderful poem in response to the class.  I'll be posting that poem and talking about teaching this weekend.

Here is also a handout about the "liturgical calendar" and celebrating textweek.com as a resource.  Download Lectionary textweek 

Textweek.com is great to research background for a sermon.  I particularly like the links to the writings of John Wesley.   It is also a easy way to find out what readings are coming up.    We are reading Revelations in our Bible Class.  I include in the attachment a sample page from textweek.com that shows how to find whether a particular Biblical passage is read on Sundays.  People interested in Bible Reading may find textweek.com useful.

Winds of the World

Daniel and I are so happy as parishioners at St. Philips in Southport.  It is exactly my church.  A good congregation is a mix of wonderful people, from all walks of life and political inclinations.  One of the benefits of belonging to a church is that it is one place where you can really get to know people you otherwise would not.  Fr. Barry is a great flock leader and a person from whom I'm learning a lot.  Daniel commented one day on our way home from services that he feels even more at home at St Philips that he did in our beloved California congregation. 

Each week I make new friends there.  I know now that I am building some really good friendships.  After our friends in Palo Alto, then in Cambridge, foolish me thought: well I’ve had my friends; I’ll make friends, but at my age, I can’t expect to have “really good friendships” starting in my life again.  I was totally wrong about that.

One of my new friends is Martha Myers.  After the session when I talked about Isaiah 58 (see handout in previous posting), I got an email from her with this poem that speaks right to my heart.  I’m sharing with you here with her permission.

In her email she wrote, “Having some "extra" time this afternoon between appointments, I chose to sit (in my car) at the Waterfront Park, and use the time for quiet reflection and meditation. Not having any other reading material with me, I started reading what you gave us today.. Attached is what resulted.”

THE WINDS OF THE WORLD

Scriptural Reference: Isaiah 58:11

The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

Life has tossed you about on the open sea,
Out where the winds of the world are howling all around.
Blown side to side, then forward and back,
Where will they take you, those winds of the world?

Will you find your way to safety?
Will you make it to the calm?
Bouncing randomly along those waters,
Bouncing with the winds of the world.

The answer, you know, is out there in those howling winds.
Out there in the form of a safety net,
Free from the rough, wild, and random kind of bouncing.
Safety for you from the winds of the world.

The winds will calm just briefly,
And you will think you have found the answer.
You think you have done it on your own, like so many times before.
Only to fooled again, by the winds of the world.

Before long, the calm comes to an end,
Only to have the howling and bouncing begin again.
That bouncing makes you tougher, your mind, your bones, your all.
But still you bounce, in the winds of the world.

Tossed about on that open sea, in all that water
You still thirst for that elusive drink.
That drink that when found will quench your thirst.
That drink that will at last, calm the winds of the world.

And then one day you find it, while tossing to and fro,
That never-ending source of calm water,
Where the winds of the world howl no more.
That place where, the peace of the Lord will guide you on.

©  Martha Myers

February 10, 2010 Southport NC