No Cover

The announcement in the paper said, “No cover,” for the Live Poets Society meeting. Where does that strange phrase come from? Of course it means no charge to get into the event. Then again, who pays to hear poets read their work, except perhaps other poets?

I have been thinking today about the phrase, “No cover,” in relation to my poetry. I think it might work as the title for the poem I’ve been contemplating about the upcoming medical mission trip to Nicaragua. Poets at their best write with no cover—like those faithful members of the Live Poets Society, who lay their hearts out for all to see at our monthly meetings. I will be going to Nicaragua with no cover, as a poet, to a land which, like Ireland, reveres poets as national treasures.

For the trip to Nicaragua I will leave behind my normal cover and go into a place well beyond my comfort zone—no iPhone; no jewelry, not even my wedding rings and my grandmother’s engagement ring and tiny gold cross; no makeup (not that I wear much these days!); no blue jeans, but scrubs like nurses wear; no familiar food and drink, but gallo pinto (aka rice and red beans) three meals a day; no familiar surroundings and people, only strangers who speak Spanish, which I am expected to help translate.

If I can capture in a poem the sense that I am about to step into another universe, stripped of my usual cover, perhaps I can also capture why I go on these trips that are so far out of my norm. It is because on each prior mission trip, I have met Christ in a different incarnation. Stepping outside my comfort zone with no cover was the basic requirement for those experiences.

Grace and Peace,

Donna Sue

Gratitude

I meet weekly in the early morning with a small group of writers at a local Starbucks, where we write briefly from word prompts and then share what we have written with each other. Last week, as we approached the end of 2011, we wrote on the topic of gratitude. I wrote mostly about my gratitude for my family and the blessing of being able to see them often. But as my mind has been preoccupied with the upcoming medical mission trip to Nicaragua, I also wrote about my gratitude for those things I most often take too much for granted—a roof over my head, food to eat and access to good medical care. What I neglected to include in my reflection on gratitude was thanksgiving for clean, safe, water that flows from the tap each time I turn it on. Janice, the leader of our medical mission adventure, has been going to Nicaragua on such trips for 15 years now, and she was excited to learn that the place we will be staying has running water with flush toilets and showers. She said on previous trips she has bathed out of a bucket, so this will be luxurious. Nonetheless, she had to make special arrangements for water that will be safe for us to drink. I have found that to be one of the ongoing challenges on prior mission trips. I have to remember not to take a drink from the tap and not to rinse my toothbrush at the tap. I have to remember to pack enough water for the day’s activities from the safe source that has been provided for us. It is so much easier to simply turn on the tap and have all the fresh, clean water I need. In this as in so many other ways, we are blessed in this country. Too many around the world lack access to clean water or to readily available water of any sort. We can live without many of the things we take for granted, but not without water. When I remember that, I realize again the power of Jesus’ assertion that he is living water, the blessed substance without which life is impossible.

Grace and Peace,

Donna Sue

Venison Sausage and Tough Love

Moses and Zipporah joined our family several years ago now. Morning walks are a ritual, and I can expect to find two eager faces watching me eat breakfast through the door to the screened porch. When I finish and begin to lace up my walking shoes, they begin barking and running in circles with excitement. Some walks are more exciting than others. Squirrels and cats provoke frantic barking and tugs at the leashes that I have to restrain. 

One morning this past week, the walk included discovery of hidden treasure. Why anyone would drop or toss a large, plastic-wrapped stick of venison sausage in the dried leaves along the side of the road where we walk is a mystery. When Moses found his treasure, I thought he had unearthed another dead squirrel and hurried to relieve him of the body before he could eat it. What I discovered instead was a fat sausage with a greasy plastic cover that made getting a grip on it impossible. I lost the tug of war and was unable to pry his jaws open to take the sausage away. Moses patiently opposed me and refused to drop the sausage.

Frustrated and in a hurry, I began walking towards home, for the first time hoping without success for a squirrel or cat alert that would prompt Moses to bark and drop the sausage. As we approached the house, I realized I could not let Moses off the leash as usual, or he would simply run away down the hill with the sausage. I feared the plastic and the sun-ripened meat would make him sick. Opening the gate, I let the dogs into the back yard as usual then walked into the screened porch and closed the door. I managed to let Zipporah off her leash with one hand. Then I turned to Moses, prepared for another tug of war.

He had dropped the sausage! I managed to grab it and pitch it over the fence, thinking that was the end of the adventure. Moses, however, planted himself by the chain link fence, growling at Zipporah each time she approached, an unusual confrontation probably prompted by the smell of the sausage just beyond the fence. Worried he might jump the chain link fence, I let myself out of the garage and searched through the dead leaves and fallen trees outside the fence, praying I would find the sausage and no snakes. When I found the chunk of meat, I learned the forbidden treasure was venison sausage, which I promptly dumped in the trash can. My hands were greasy and, dirty, and I had worked up a sweat. Tough love is also tough for the giver.

Moses was not happy with the loss of his giant treat. I regretted relieving him of his unexpected prize, but also did not want him to make himself sick. It would have been much easier to just let him have the sausage. I thought about the times I had to disappoint my sons by denying them some treasured item or experience. Then I thought about the times I had been the recipient of God’s tough love. It is no fun being on the receiving end either. I thought about the times God has gently denied some item or experience I thought was indispensable, until I gained the wisdom to understand the treasure was no prize. Tough love is one of those hard blessings that sometimes come to us in this life, love in a form that can be hard to recognize, but is love nonetheless.

Grace and Peace,

Donna Sue

Green Pastures

As I opened my blog to write a new post, I realized that I wrote last about Psalm 23, which has been on my mind again for a different reason. My husband and I returned recently from our first trip to Ireland, a place that is cool and green and blessed with rain. As we drove around the countryside and watched the fat sheep in the lush grass, I thought of Psalm 23 and the Psalmist’s promise that God makes us lie down in green pastures. I found that just being there refreshed my body, tired from the 100 plus degrees of this summer in Central Texas, and my soul, weary from the sadness of the past few weeks. Simply being in such a place made the Psalm seem more real to me and reminded me of God’s love. What a blessing to have time away in a beautiful place among new friends to renew my spirit. Maggie, if you are reading this know that you are a blessing. The trip would not have been the same without you, and I am most grateful to have met you.

Grace and Peace,

Donna Sue

The Valley of the Shadow

I have not written a post in almost three months. I have written elsewhere, but not here so it is past time to revive this practice. Today at church we said goodbye to a young friend, a child of our church, who is going to Northern Ireland for a year as a young adult missionary for the Presbyterian Church. She has started a blog about her adventures, and you will find her link under Erin Jezek. She said she too need to post something now that she is on her way, and I committed to updating my blog as well. We have had a bittersweet time at our church of late. Today was a sweet time of remembering this young woman's life and sending her off with our prayers and well wishes after she was commissioned for service. She is so full of life and promise and will be a blessing to those she meets there. I pray they will bless her as well.

The last few weeks have been a rough ones otherwise. A little over a month ago we lost a long time member to leukemia. Our pastor commented that there seemed to be a pall cast over the church as we waited knowing this woman would die soon. A month after her death, our pastor died. She went in for surgery and never woke up. We are still reeling from that loss. As a result of these bitter experiences, our congregation has spent too much time of late in the valley of the shadow of death. I have been thinking about that phrase from Psalm 23 as we have gathered around to support each other: "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." I am grateful for the words of the Psalm I memorized as a child to comfort me in this sad time. And even more grateful for the knowledge of the sure and steady presence of God with us as we have travelled through the dark shadows.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Poet power

"The Elizabethans, more perceptive than later critics, feared [poets] as witches and hanged them as fomenters of treason." Ireland: a Concise History.

I ran across this quote as I was reading the history of Ireland in preparation for a fall trip to the one place in my heritage I have not yet visited. I have been chewing on the quote ever since and have written one poem in response. I do not think poets are nearly as powerful in our culture as they were in Elizabethan times in Ireland, but even here and now words have power, and those who use them courageously and well can have an impact. In my journey into the realm of poetry, I have spent many hours among poets and have come to appreciate their clear vision and honest reactions to this world in which we live. The ones I know are, for the most part, sensitive people in tune with others and the world around them in a way that can offer a fresh perspective to the rest of us if we have ears to hear and eyes to see. I am convinced the world would be a much better place if we spent less time listening to the politicians and pundits and much more time listening to poets.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Planes in the sky

I experienced a surreal, heart-stopping moment as I left the local grocery store earlier this week. I heard the roar as I approached the door with my basket and looked up to catch a glimpse of a jet roaring past so low it seemed to barely miss the cars in the parking lot. As I stepped outside, I joined the knot of worried people gathered and watching the sky as two fighter jets appeared to chase each other around in circles in the kind of maneuvers I've seen before only in movies like Top Gun. As they circled around again and then vanished in the distance, the small crowd asked questions and made comments: Is it the air show? No that is over. Obama is in Austin today. The firefighters just coming into the store don't seem alarmed so it can't be local. It looks like they have missiles! Did you see if they said USA on the side? I held my breath waiting to see what would happen next, and talked with a young neighbor in the group. As nothing more happened, after a few minutes we disbursed. My stomach felt queasy as I searched the news channels on satellite radio for any alarms on the way home. When I arrived home I hurried to turn on the TV, but saw nothing on the 24/7 news and began to breathe a bit easier.

It was only later in the day after posting a comment about the experience on Facebook that I learned the event had been a farewell flyover from the air show. That knowledge would have made the whole experience less scary. I called the young neighbor to tell her, and we both talked about how nice it would have been to know that at the time. Since then I have been thinking about how much we have lost in the decade since the September 11th attacks on this country. Those attacks were of course freshly on everyone's mind with the recent assasination of Osama bin Laden in the news. Living as we do within 30 miles of Ft. Hood, the world's largest US Army base, produces a different sort of mindset. We see and hear the activity as Ft. Hood goes about its business: the boom of artillery that rattles the windows, the planes lumbering overhead, and the slow-moving, camouflaged vehicles that sometimes crowd the highways. The military is part of the air we breath.

I long for the sense of security I had growing up, and I grieve for the young people, like my grandchildren, who will never feel safe in quite the same way I did as a child. But perhaps there is a blessing hidden in the new reality, for we now know in our guts the fear that many in the world live with daily and can therefore be more attentive to their plight. As I am forced to face the fact that life is uncertain and out of our control, I am reminded in a stark way that my only true security lies in God's love. God is all I have on earth or in heaven, and all I need. It is a hard blessing to know that, but a blessing just the same.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue