Zai jian

My husband and I have just finished a semester of Conversational Chinese at the local university with Yan Yong, a young professor who came from China for a year as a Fulbright Scholar. It has been an amazing, challenging and wonderful experience to learn more about the language and culture that is part of the heritage of one of our grandsons. Yan is a linguist and a truly gifted teacher. I realize how much I don't know after one semester, but I also realize we have come a long ways. My husband and I can now carry on basic conversations in Chinese, and no one around us here in central Texas is likely to understand what we're saying--even people who actually speak Chinese because our pronunciation is so bad!

What I didn't count on was becoming so fond of our teacher. Saying goodbye to her Tuesday evening after the final exam, was really hard. She has the harder task of parting with many people she has come to know over the last two semesters, but I have no doubt her family and her fiance are waiting expectantly for her to return home. What a blessing she has been in our lives, a blessing that will continue to bless our little grandson now that all his grandparents speak at least a little Chinese (his other grandmother grew up speaking Chinese. Hopefully he will be encouraged to pass on his rich heritage to his children as well. The Bible teaches that God's blessings run to children and children's children. Yan has blessed our family far into the future. Zai Jian, by the way, is the Chinese way of saying good bye, and it literally means see again. A good way to say good bye. That English expression, by the way, has been shortened from the original "God be with ye," also a good way to say good bye.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Drinking Deeply

I have begun work on my next sermon and have been focused on the text from John's Gospel where Jesus tells his disciples, "whatever you ask for in my name will be granted." I asked our choir director to repeat an anthem we did just before Easter on the Sunday I will be preaching. It's a particularly beautiful piece, and the choir loved it. More importantly it talks of drinking "deeply of the endless water of life." I think that's how one goes about praying in Jesus' name--by drinking deeply of the living water Christ offers. I don't think praying in Jesus' name means simply tacking on "in Jesus' name" at the end of a prayer like some magical incantation, though there's certainly nothing wrong with adding that phrase to a prayer. But I think what's more important is drinking deeply of Christ and in so doing learning how to pray as He did. It's that simple, and that difficult.

As I was pondering this topic and how best to speak to our congregation (which this time will include one of my sons and his wife!), I received a phone call advising me that I'd won first place in poetry and non-fiction in this year's local literary contest. A second call told me as a result of winning the poetry prize, I would be named poet laureate for the next year. I am still in shock over that! As I concluded my seminary education and was pondering what might come next, I attended a faith in writing course taught by Ann Weems, who is a wonderful poet. I had not written poetry before that conference, but have been doing so since then. God seems to keep turning me back to writing as a calling, and I remember well Ann insisting that faith in writing is a ministry. So perhaps this next year will allow me to share what I have learned of drinking deeply of the living water of Christ through my poetry. A scary blessing, but then most blessings are.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Tasting and Seeing

This has been a long week. My little granddaughter has been in the hospital with a stomach virus, and I've been worried about her. I learned when our first grandchild came along that one of the hardest things about being a grandma is standing on the sidelines and waiting. Being a woman of action, I find that difficult. My son just called to say they were on their way home from the hospital, and I realized I've been holding my breath waiting to hear she was doing better. When kids are this little, they can't really give them anything to stop the vomiting. Instead they hook them up to an IV and hope that keeps their fluid level up enough so that they can survive until the virus has run its course.

The first night she was in the hospital, my son soberly reflected on the kids in third world countries who don't have access to health care and die from the kind of illness that hospitalized my little granddaughter. My son and I talked about the fact that their parents and grandparents don't love them any less than we love this sweet little girl. In Eugene Peterson's version of Psalm 34 in The Message, the Psalmist says: "Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see--how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him." We have certainly run to God and clung to him this week, and as always God was waiting with open arms to support us.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Being Important

I'm thankful that today is the primary here in Texas. This year Texas is considered an important state so the candidates have been lavishing attention on us. I've lost count of the many computerized phone calls we've received. John McCain just "called," and Hillary "called" before lunch. Perhaps there are those who are impressed to hear the recorded voice of someone important. Personally, I prefer the human touch and was more impressed by a call from a live human being asking for my vote. I am grateful for the opportunity we have to go to the polls in this country and for a choice of candidates. All too many around the world are not so lucky. Our friends in Cuba, for instance, just witnessed a presidential "election" in which the result was preordained. I'm willing to put up with a few phone calls in exchange for having a voice. That's a blessing. As for being important, I know that in God's eyes I matter and more than enough importance for me.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Rethinking priorities

This has been a week that has forced me to rethink life's priorities. My husband came home last week with the flu and graciously shared. This week as he was getting better I was getting worse. I am grateful we were not both sick at the same time. For a time, what became most important in my life was simply continuing to breathe and to drink. I didn't really care whether I ate or not. It's funny how such an experience always reminds me that many things in life that seem important don't matter all that much when you are forced back upon life's elemental basics. Of course I would consider love one of those basics, and I have been blessed by my husband's love and care as I've recuperated.

Ironically, I've struggled this week to complete my sermon for tomorrow, which is based on the Apostle Paul's assertion that we Christians can boast in our sufferings because suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. While as suffering goes, this has been small compared to the sufferings of others, surviving the experience required me to endure. I'm not sure how much it has enhanced my character, but I'm grateful for God's help in all of this. In that help is my hope, which is the sermon in a nutshell now that I think about it. The sermon is done, by the grace of God as always, but more so this time as I've not been thinking all that clearly. Hopefully tomorrow will go well for the sake of those coming to worship. I've learned to rely on God for leading worship and God has never failed me. I don't expect tomorrow to be any different.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

A Death in the Family

I just received a message from our daughter-in-law. They are taking their boxer, Max, to the vet today to be put down. He developed cancer recently and has gone downhill rapidly. He woke up in pain this morning, and they don't want him to suffer anymore. They got the dog when our son was in medical school in Houston after a break in and shooting in the complex where they were living at the time. Since then Max has loved and protected his family with all his big heart. I'd never been around a boxer before, and I was impressed with how gentle and patient he was with our grandkids. He would walk carefully and stop in mid-stride when they crawled underneath. More recently he has put up with the attention of our little granddaughter, who has alternately tugged on him and dropped food to him from her high chair. She's not yet 2 and will not understand where her big friend has gone. I suspect this will be harder for her 5 year old brother as it will be his first experience of death and loss. I pray God will give me the right words when he wants to talk about it. We're going down for his birthday party this weekend. I think I'll tell him that I know that God is love, and I know that the God who created Max loved him as much as his family did. I may also tell him if he asks that Max has gone to a place where he will never be in pain again. Sounds like heaven to me.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Apocalypse

I make my husband a little crazy by reading in bed for a few minutes each night before turning off my bedside light. Lately I've been reading Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris and savoring her essays on the difficult words in the vocabulary of faith. Last night I read her thoughts on one of the most difficult faith words for me--apocalypse. Like me Norris says she has a hard time with those whose approach to evangelism is to beat people verbally over the head with accusations of sinfulness and threats of hell-fire and damnation. I like Norris' reminder that the apocalyptic writings in the Bible were written to those who were marginalized by the larger culture in which they lived and who had little or no stake in the status quo. I especially like her argument that apocalyptic literature is about hope, the hope that "despite considerable evidence to the contrary, in the end it is good that will prevail." Thus the God who is promised at the end of the apocalyptic book of Revelation is one who will come to wipe all our tears away. What a beautiful and hopeful image!

As I struggle to write about another trip to Cuba with a group from our church in a way that will reach the hearts and minds of those who have not had the opportunity to visit with the Christians in that country, I find myself returning again and again to the hope and joy I experienced in the churches and in the lives of the individuals we met there. As Kathleen Norris so wisely writes, we humans seem to show our real strength best when we are faced with disaster--when our perpetual delusion of self-sufficiency is shattered, at least momentarily. That is when we can begin to see "what is possible in the new life we build from the ashes of the old." The Cuban Christians have learned to live faithfully in a society that has experienced radical changes in my lifetime and in a place where everyday life is difficult. And yet these faithful Christians joyfully demonstrate the kind of hope Norris writes about. Like the writers in the Bible who proclaimed hope in the midst of calamity, the Cuban Christians live out God's possibilities in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances. I pray I will find the words to convey the hope that they have and the reason for that hope to those here who are in need of such promise, which on any given day is most of us.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue