The Little Green Shoe

I have sitting on my dresser a little green ceramic shoe shaped like a Dutch wooden shoe.  It is tiny and has a chip and a crack at the top edge.  It is painted delicately and has a symbol and “Germany” on the bottom.  I have no idea how old it is.  It belonged to my grandmother who was born in 1890.  I have had it since I was about 13 years old, and I remember exactly how I acquired it.

 

My mother’s parents died in 1957 and 1958.  Grandpa passed first, followed by Grandma a year later.  She said her heart was broken when she lost him, and she spent that last year in a steady decline. One of my uncles who did not live locally came for her funeral and stayed afterward.  He went through the family home and sorted, organized, and discarded.  After this huge effort on his part, the family gathered and, with no arguments, items were divided among the 4 siblings.

 

I sat at the kitchen table with my mother and her sisters-in-law.  Before us were spread out all the knickknacks from the house.  One by one the items on the table were chosen by the ladies.  I was overwhelmed with sadness as I watched.  I felt as if my grandparents’ home, which held so many happy memories for me, was disintegrating before my eyes.  Just as the little green shoe was held up for selection, one of my aunts noticed my facial expression.  She declared, “Ruthie wants that!”  The truth was that I had no desire for it or anything else on the table.  What good was any of it without my grandparents?  But, everyone agreed that I must want it and should have it.

 

So for nearly sixty-four years, the little ceramic shoe has been on my dresser as I moved from place to place.  I am glad that I have it, not because it is a handy place to keep safety pins or a stick of lip balm, but for the memory of my grandmother who read to me and sang to me and called me a pet name not used by anyone else.

 

Someday my knickknacks will be dispersed.  I hope no one thinks the little chipped and cracked ceramic shoe is worthless.

Breathing Common Air

Rolling over, our faces nearly touch.

I feel the motion of his breath.

He exhales as I inhale.

We breathe common air.

 

Our conversation flows.

His words stimulate my thoughts

My replies impact his ideas.

We come to a joint decision.

 

We sit in a chilly room.

I push up against him.

He puts his arm around me.

We share the warmth between us.

 

He can’t read the fine print.

I stumble on the stairs.

We make up for the other’s weakness,

Taking the painful edge from aging.

 

We breathe together,

We think together,

We share warmth,

We bear one another’s burdens.

 

When one of us must leave,

Will the other stumble in the cold?

Will the one left behind be able to think?

Will it even be possible to breathe?

Bad Theology on Young Sheldon

Admittedly The Big Bang Theory and spinoff Young Sheldon are not great places to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine, but the episode this past week was especially unsettling.  It can be expected that Sheldon himself will promote atheistic ideas, but it is unfortunate that the “youth pastor” was the source of poor theology this time.

Sheldon’s mother Mary Cooper and the youth pastor carried on a bit of flirtation and ended up smoking cigarettes together in the parking lot when they were supposed to be supervising the youth group on an overnight “lock-in.”  They began this unfortunate event by discussing their past temptation to smoke, and the comment was made that the fortunate thing about being a Christian is that if you sin, you can be forgiven.  If this was an attempt to mock such thinking, it was not made clear.

It is true that forgiveness is always available.  However, deciding in advance that one can go ahead and sin and then acquire forgiveness is not scriptural.  The apostle Paul specifically discusses this bit of skewed thinking in the 5^th and 6^th chapters of Romans.  Apparently neither the youth pastor nor Mary Cooper are familiar with this passage.

(Phillips’ translation)…Yet, though sin is shown to be wide and deep, thank God his grace is wider and deeper still!...Now what is our response to be?  Shall we sin to our heart’s content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God?  What a ghastly thought!  We, who have died to sin…how could we live in sin a moment longer…..Do not, then, allow sin to establish any power over your mortal bodies in making you give way to your lusts….But, like men rescued from certain death, put yourselves in God’s hands as weapons of good for his own purposes.  For sin is not meant to be your master---you are no longer living under the Law, but under grace.  Now, what shall we do?  Shall we go on sinning because we have no Law to condemn us any more, but are living under grace?  Never!  Just think what it would mean.  You belong to the power which you choose to obey.

Paul makes it abundantly clear that thinking, “because I am a Christian I can do whatever I please, and then God will forgive me” is faulty logic.  If you are choosing to sin knowingly and willfully, your Christian commitment is in question.  “You belong to the power which you choose to obey.” God knows your heart and your motivation.  He is not interested in playing games with you.

It would be extremely sad if anyone bought into Christianity with the intent of sinning as much as he/she pleased and expected God’s immense grace to apply to purposeful sin.

La Cucaracha

When I was a child taking piano lessons and was first aware of the song La Cucaracha, I had no idea to what it was referring.  It was just a peppy song with an interesting rhythm.  I did not know that translated into English, it was The Cockroach.  I also did not know what a cockroach was.  Growing up in the north, I had never seen a cockroach.  In that cold climate, I later learned that only people who did not keep a clean home had cockroaches.  They like garbage, and they seek out damp areas.

Decades later, I learned that a sweet elderly lady in our church had a cockroach infestation.  Her apartment was immaculate, but the apartment of someone in her building was not.  Cockroaches invaded her home from an adjacent too dirty apartment.  One of the ladies in the church took her out for an extended lunch time, while a group of us went into her apartment, spraying and vacuuming up dead cockroach bodies and droppings.  We hoped this would bring her at least temporary relief.

Later still, an acquaintance was planning to buy a used appliance and was concerned there might be cockroaches in it from the prior owner.  I talked with an appliance repairman, who told me the solution was quite simple.  Since it was winter and we were experiencing a spell of near zero Fahrenheit temperatures, the appliance should just be left outdoors in the garage or on a front porch for a few days.  The roaches would not survive, and it would then be safe to move the appliance indoors.

When one of my daughters moved to Texas, she called me one evening horrified, because there was a large cockroach in her apartment.  I could hear the sounds of her trying to squash it by hitting it with a running shoe.

Well…. now I live in Florida.  I know these nasty critters are endemic here. Earlier this week, I saw one about an inch long running across my kitchen countertop.  My husband came to the rescue and dispatched it.  He did this with a tissue.  I was looking for a book to hit it with.  I couldn’t bear the idea of the crunch I knew it would make.

I have checked around the cupboards and under the sink.  I have found no droppings or eggs, but I am now skittish.  I am hoping that cockroach was just a random fellow wandering through.

But, I have looked around the kitchen twice this morning, because I thought I heard the sound of something chewing, and La Cucaracha is playing in my head.

Incarnation

 He who created the universe,

Willingly confined to bones and flesh,

Immortality became mortal,

Accepting frail humanness.

 

We, the product of his hands,

Allowed to touch with ours,

The very hands and face of God,

Who for us subdues his powers.

 

His visage could have struck us dead,

But instead, was marred by man,

For from the very dawn of time,

His death was his own plan.

 

How can I comprehend it?

A humble incarnation,

Design of an Almighty God

To bring to us salvation.

Hillary, the Deplorables and Abortion

I just read an article saying that Hillary was right about “deplorables” and their desire to reverse Roe V. Wade and therefore, take away women’s autonomy over their own bodies.

Deplorables are depicted as uneducated right-wing Christian fascists.  Well, that’s pretty insulting to someone like myself who has a graduate degree, typically scores in the 98^th to 99^th percentile on tests, and does not consider my views to be off the rails into extremism.

I have NOT wanted to vote for Trump in the past two elections.  It required “holding my nose.”  I am appalled by some of his attitudes and behaviors.  However, I was also appalled by the policies espoused by Hillary and now Joe.

I actually do not believe that all abortion is murder.  I know that may be heresy to some of my Christian friends.  I think it is warranted in certain situations…very few situations, but some.  I can stomach the idea of early abortion, particularly in cases of rape and incest.  However, if nothing else, abortion demonstrates disrespect for life.  That general diminishing of the great importance of human life is behind other ills in our society.  School shootings are one thing that come to mind.  Human life, including one’s own life, must be significantly devalued to the point of mental illness for such atrocities to occur.

I would argue that a woman gives up control of her own body when she spreads her legs and allows a man between them.  She is surrendering her autonomy either to him or to her own passions.  There are natural consequences to our behaviors.  The risk of pregnancy is one of them.  Either you accept the consequences of your behavior, or you find some way out…perhaps by terminating the life of your own child.

Whether Hillary et al. want to believe it or not, there are moral absolutes.  Our society has totally abandoned that notion.  When everything becomes acceptable, we leave ourselves and our children drifting in a nightmare.  To what will we cling?  What hope do we have?  What we do have is despair as exhibited by most school shooters and large segments of our society, who feel oppressed and misunderstood.  They act out in rage or dull their pain through substance abuse. 

Trump was in many ways not a reasonable man. (I hope that he does not run in 2024.) I am hopeful that his appointees to the Supreme Court are reasonable people who will do whatever they can to restore some foundational beliefs which have been flushed down the drain in recent years.  If they can’t do that, our country is going to go swirling down the sewer into chaos and complete moral decay.

A Matter of Perspective

“It’s all a matter of perspective.”  I have heard that expression at times thorough out my life and have previously pondered it.

Today I am flying from San Francisco, California, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I am thinking about how different one’s perspective of the topography is from a bird’s eye view as from a walking or driving view.  What appears to be an insurmountable barrier from below, looks like nothing more than a slight indentation from 30,000 feet above.  As we drive along a highway passing through cities and towns, we have no concept of the vast wilderness that is on either side of it.  We may stand next to a river watching its flow, but we have no understand of where it comes from or where it goes.  A wind turbine looks like a bit of a toothpick from the air, but having stood at the base of one, I can tell you that they are enormous.

My granddaughter accused me this week of not understanding what it is like to be a child.  She doesn’t just think I have forgotten.  She thinks I never was a child and went straight to being a grandmother!  She is seven, so she can be forgiven for this total lack of logic.  Actually, I do remember what it is like to be a child, and that is why I bother to attempt to correct her behaviors.  I also remember what it was like to be a not-yet-mature adult, which is why I was not offended greatly when a grandson told me that my ideas were out-dated and irrelevant. There is a perspective with age.  One might wish to impart a 70+ year old perspective to a young person, but unfortunately…or maybe fortunately…we each have to live life and experience some pain and sorrow to gain perspective from the passage of time.

Gender also impacts perspective.  I have been better than most females at understanding what goes through the male brain.  I generally get along better with a group of men than with a group of women.  I like women and have women friends with whom I share a deep connection, but trying to function with a group of women sometimes drives me a little crazy.  It’s not that there is anything wrong with the way men and women think…it is wonderful that both exist.  But they come from different perspectives.  Something which gets discussed in mind-numbing detail by women would be quickly decided by a group of men.  I was once part of an all-female committee that spent three meetings discussing what color the napkins should be at an up-coming event.  I didn’t attend the last of those meetings, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control the words that came out of my mouth.

Perhaps, the most important perspective comes from one’s worldview.  How did we get here?  Do we have a purpose?  Do our lives have meaning?  If so, what is it?  I have been at social events where the discussion has led me to believe that my worldview is quite different than that of the typical middle-class white person.  I believe there is a God who is creator and sustainer of the universe.  I believe we are here to honor Him with our lives.  I believe He has a grand design for the world and humanity, and that we each are to play a part in fulfilling His plan.  I believe everything we think we own, really belongs to Him.  It comes from His kindness to us, and we are responsible to Him for how we use it.  That includes our time, talents, and material resources.  I believe God sent His only Son in the person of Jesus to pay the penalty for our sin and to restore our broken relationship with Him.  This is the perspective that has impacted my entire life.

If you are reading this, spend some time thinking about your perspective.