"It is Finished"

Good Friday: April 22, 2011: As the Pastor read the story of Jesus' final hours, I noticed the black organza that covered the banner hanging to my right. A breeze blowing through the church blew the bottom half of the cloth off the banner. I wondered: Will the breeze continue to blow the cloth throughout the service? Or, if it stops, might it stop at the moment that Jesus dies in the well-known story of His crucifixion? I continued to look periodically, but found myself focused on the story during the scourge against Jesus. Sometime after the crucifixion, I looked up again to see that the breeze was no longer blowing the cloth. As the story reached the final moments of Jesus' earthly life, the cloth of mourning was still. The wind that had caused the cloth to flutter and expose the banner was quiet, as if to say, "It is finished."

Good Friday services are filled with emotion. The black organza blowing in the breeze, then resting in peace at such a moment, brought a feeling of peace to a moment of trauma.

Diffuse Systemic Scleraderma

My Mom died at the age of 75 after suffering for several years with Diffuse Systemic Scleraderma. We knew it then as CREST Syndrome. CREST stood for the 5 aspects of the disease which a person could have. Mom had Calcinosis, Raynaud's Syndrome, Esophageal ??, and Scleraderma, but not the component that begins with the letter "T."

About two years before she died, she was placed on an experimental medication that my memory tells me cost the government (research?) $3,000 a month. In August of 2005, Mom returned to Mayo Clinic for evaluation, at least part of which was to determine the effect this experimental medication was having on her disease. The tests indicated that her disease was progressing: She was getting worse, fast. Their conclusion? This experimental medication did not work. They took her off the medication.

Less than a month later, in September 2005, Mom and Dad left, as usual, for their winter home in Texas. About the middle of September, I received the first of what was to be many telephone calls from my Dad. Each one was a repeat of the first: "Mom had a really bad night, and I didn't get any sleep. This has been going on for some time, and we can't keep going like this. We need help."

I always responded with, "I'll fly down as soon as I can get a flight." The call ended with an affirmation of that plan, only to be followed up within hours by another call. "We've talked it over. Don't come. We were just tired, and feeling hopeless. We have rested, and we are ok. There is nothing for you to do here. Don't spend the money now. Wait. We'll let you know if things get worse."

Finally, on Oct. 3rd, the number of these emergency calls convinced me to reject their conclusion that I should not fly to Texas to spend time with them. I stayed with them for 8 days, leaving at that time only because they insisted I needed to return to my home and family. Before leaving, I visited my mother's sister, who lived near them in Texas. In our conversation, I found an opening I considered safe for delivering to my mother's favorite sister the message I knew she wouldn't want to hear: "I don't think Mom is going to make it to Christmas. She might make it to Thanksgiving, but not much longer."

I returned home and immediately contacted my four siblings to give them the same message and encourage them to find an opportunity to visit as soon as possible. Three weeks later, on Nov. 3, 2005, while two of my sisters were flying home from their last visit to our mother's bedside, Mom died.

Less than 2 months after she discontinued her experimental medication, Mom's disease killed her. For about two years, taking this medication, Mom lived with her disease; was it because this experimental medication was slowing the pace of the disease? I suspect we will never know, but the drastic change from some deterioration to immediate decline followed by death within 2 months seems to indicate that this experimental medication was having a positive impact. Without a baseline to which we could compare the progression of her disease during those two years, we won't know the answer to this plaguing question.

My Mom kept a daily journal. My Dad still has all volumes of it, and I have read portions of it. She provides more detail than I am able to remember and record here. I wonder, with the lack of research on this disease, if her case with her notes could help someone else suffering from Diffuse Systemic Scleraderma experience a better outcome.

My Personal Post-Note:

Most of us must experience the death of a mother, and I know that God's presence was my most powerful crutch through this difficult time. It is only human, however, to carry the memory of regrets. I have two of them. #1: While visiting her, Mom wanted desperately to have her hair washed. She was too sensitive to cold temperatures to go to the shower and too weak to climb two stairs to reach a sink, so we never washed her hair. #2: When I said "good-bye," she was sleeping in her recliner. That was what she wanted me to believe, and I fell for it. I said "good-bye," in general to the space in which she and Dad were sitting, but I didn't go to her, hug her and give her my love and personal good-bye. These are hard failures to live with, but once again, I know God is giving me strength to accept my failures and live with them in peace, and in the joy of believing that she is better off where she is than she was when she was suffering from this awful disease.

My Family Journal: Ephesians: We Are God's Temple

My Family Journal: Ephesians: We Are God's Temple: "A couple of years ago, my middle school Sunday Church School class built 'God's Temple' based on the book of Ephesians. Our interpretation ..."

Ephesians: We Are God's Temple

A couple of years ago, my middle school Sunday Church School class built "God's Temple" based on the book of Ephesians. Our interpretation came from Henrietta Mears book, What the Bible is all About. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes the church (ecclesia) as a building of "stones" with the "Christ Stone" at its head. We are the "stones," and understanding the rooms of this temple provides a deeper understanding of Paul's message to the people of Ephesus, and of our relationship with God.

With Chapter 1, we explore the Anteroom, where we are reminded of how we are blessed by God. We are "saints in Christ Jesus," "chosen," "redeemed and forgiven," "sharers in His promise," and holders of the "wisdom of God." This was God's intended foundation for us from before the creation of the world. How well do we know the platform from which we begin our relationship with God?

We might be tempted to tremble as we enter Chapter 2, the Audience Chamber of the King. Like Paul, we are ever mindful of our sin-filled past, made whole by the greatest gift of all, the blood of the King's son. Here, the Holy Spirit is prepared to guide our transformation, welcoming us, teaching us the difference between the darkness and the lightness, between the desperation and the hope, between a Saul and a Paul. What wondrous love is this?

In the Throne Room, we anticipate the need to certify our right to enter, but instead, the Lamb of God invites us in as one of the flock. We are here by God's grace and mercy. Like Paul, we seek to be "strengthened by the Spirit" and have "Christ live within us." We hope to know the "breadth," "length," "heights," and "fullness of God."

Entering Chapter 4, the Jewel Room or the Garment Chamber, we are reminded to shed our old ways and put on the garments befitting the children of God. Each of us is a "gem" designed uniquely by God and for a purpose. We are baptized and become one of God's own, with "complete humility," "bearing with one another in love," and "keeping the bond of peace."

The Choir and Oratory Room (Eph. 5) reminds us of our responsibility to accept, acknowledge, and share our God-given talents for the benefit of all of God's family. Instead of burying our talents, we invest them, witnessing to the power and glory of Christ and helping our community grow.

Finally, we enter the Armory where we put on the armor of God, the strength to stand with our Triune God and display the glories of being in a relationship with the Almighty King, the joy of being part of God's Kingdom, and the peace of knowing we can always trust God with our fears and our failures. "Here I am, Lord. It is I, Lord."

After building these six rooms, we decided we needed a "patio" on which to celebrate our community with God. The patio was imprinted with their hand-prints, and within each hand-print, each student described how he or she is different BECAUSE of his or her a relationship with God. "We belong to God. We belong to God."

What is a Dream?

Is a dream a desire? A fear? Is it mysticism?

Is it someone communicating with you? Is it a message from God? The Holy Spirit guiding you?

Knowing the answers to these questions might help us analyze our dreams. Without answers, we can only speculate about their meaning or remember them. I will choose the later.

I am sitting in a strange living room. Actually, it resembles the living room I have imagined my Great Grandparents Murray having. But why would a dream about their house, a place I have never been? At first, I am sitting on a hard chair around a table in the middle of the room. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I move to a soft chair behind me, a recliner, I think. Two people are sitting on the couch to my left, and I think a TV is playing across the room from them.

Then one of them gets up, leaves the room, and then returns. When he returns, he walks over to me, faces me, and I recognize him. In my awake state, I acknowledge he was someone I have not seen in 24 years. His presence is so real that, in my sleeping state, I try to get up out of my soft chair to greet him, but my body will not move. It is asleep. My failure wakes me, and the image is gone, but the memory of this brief dream is as fresh as if it had really happened; happening just before I awoke. In the moment of my dream when I saw him, his face was so real, yet once I awoke, I could not remember the face in the same detail and freshness that I saw it in the dream. Now, writing this, I am still unable to see that face in the kind of detail that made it appear so real, so alive in that moment.

Awakened by God

"Why did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper?" (taken from An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor).

Taylor answers her question with, . . . "he gave them . . . specific ways of being together in their bodies . . . that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself." (p. 43)

How long I wandered this earth seeing it as trees and grass and buildings and people and all of the objects that make up our physical world. How long I lived among other people, learning what was written in books and what was told to me, rules, expectations, even stories of beauty and kindness and justice. But like the physical world, they simply existed, there for me to appreciate or not.

Like the two men traveling to Emmaus, I was blind to the real world that existed in, with, and under the physical world. I saw trees, but failed to see God's presence in them. I saw marvelous, towering buildings and lowly shacks that appeared unable to adequately house a human being, but I didn't see the hand of God at work in either of them. I saw people. I even loved people, at least some of them, but I when I looked at their faces, I saw analysis and judgement, not God.

After 55 years of seeing a world built of products such as cardboard and concrete and viewing faces as cells that were either poorly or exquisitely formed, a Pastor's invitation to the communion table shed for me a light as glorious as the one I imagined accompanied Jesus' ascension. In the story, two men on the road to Emmaus are joined by a stranger who seems unaware of the recent death of Jesus, but is able to recount the Bible's stories of all that led to that event. At Emmaus, they invite the stranger to share their bread before he travels on. At the moment when Jesus breaks the bread, the men awaken to the joyous reality that this stranger is Jesus.

This meeting of Jesus, the stranger, and the two from Emmaus was no accident: It was a lesson for all of us that Jesus, even when we don't recognize him, is here with us. He is here in the breaking of bread, in the building of towering concrete office buildings and in the building of cardboard shelters for people without homes. He is here in the trees majestically swaying above our heads, and in the homely weed trying to grow through a small hole along the dirty asphalt highway. He is here when our bodies are young and strong and healthy and when our bodies are deformed, diseased or withering. He is the baby born in a cave housing livestock, and he is every face we meet along our "roads to Emmaus."

We can't draw a line between what exists or lives on this earth and God, because God is here, everywhere, in all things and in all people. Asleep, we fail to see Him. Awakened by God, listening TO God, hearing with heart and soul, we see God everywhere. And seeing God in everything and in everyone is how we apply Jesus' final lesson to the disciples: Go out in God's world and break bread with each other knowing Jesus is sharing it too. Reach out and wash each other's feet as if you are washing the feet of Jesus, because you are.

My Garden

My Garden: A Symbol of My Life

My garden is nearly finished. Only a few adjustments are needed, but already I can visualize my stroll through this nine by 20 foot paradise. It is a Feng Shui design meant to draw people in, make them feel comfortable with just the right amount of inspiration, invigoration, and relaxation.

I enter the garden from the west where a Lemon Drop Lantana reminds me of the carefree days of childhood. I follow the flagstone path as it curves southward where my small horizon is filled with shades of red. Muhly grass flutters its purpley feathers in the breeze, and the flowers of the Hot Lips Salvia purse their petals for each hummingbird that arrives. The Agave stands majestic and confident as if it claims the title of Garden Magistrate, and behind it a Firebush heats up this corner that represents my attitude about wealth.

The flagstones keep me a safe distance from the Agave with its sharp-as-a-knife leaf tips and the excessive invigoration that all that red can bring. At my feet, the White Trailing Lantana provide refreshing relief from the energy of the south, and the brass reindeer and sleigh recall Christmas. The white flowers of the lantana provide the snow, and my memories recall the joy of one of my favorite times of the year.

My virtual journey continues, as the reds cool to the copper of a Dwarf Copper Plant and the abundant greens of a Red Yucca, a Turks Cap, and a Shrimp Plant. The scattering of flowers in shades of red make the butterflies and hummingbirds my long-term guests, but it is the green of these plants on the east side of the garden that speak the loudest to me. They represent my attitude toward family, and green says "stability."

Set into this "family" environment is my white perching rock, and I stop for a moment of peace and meditation. Nearby, I hear the baritone melody of wind chimes and watch a butterfly enjoy cool repose on a rock in the Butterfly Bath. Soon my virtual journey will end, but for now, I find peace in the Indigo Salvia facing me from the north and the carpet of Asian Jasmine covering the center of the garden. A glimpse of the New Yellow Trailing Lantana and the Whirling Butterflies (Guara Plant) in the northwest corner bring me a moment of humor.

I have found excitement, security, and peace with joy and humor acting as bookends to my journey. My flagstone path has ended, and I must find an exit. There, below my feet is the rockbed of a virtual dried up creek, and it leads me to the "shore," the driveway to my front door.

My garden is all that I had hoped it would be: A symbol of my life: Family first, then friends, companions, relationships filled with joy and humor, a sense of moderation when it comes to wealth and fame, and God's peace that surpasses all understanding filling every aspect of my life. In the virtual world, we experience the paradise we would like to have in the real world.