"The simple things remain....."

"I'll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today..."

Mmmm....flowers in a vase,  a fire, and windows illuminated with evening light....such simple pleasures from simple things.  This song gently nips at the heels of my busy-ness.  Whenever life seems too complicated, and wading through a jungle of choices overwhelms me, I can always count on the sound of a song, like Crosby, Stills, and Nash singing "Our House," to soften the sharp edges of the insistent  "okay, but when...," weed out the bramble of "too much again,"and carve out a neat space of "Thy will be done" for me to curl up, and nest in.   

This is the space of deep peace and satisfaction.  In this simple room of simple thoughts, all the "stuff" that claims to have meaning...all that clamors for importance...fades  into the periphery, and what really matters takes center stage on the blank canvas of a de-cluttered consciousness. 

As my husband once shared with me:

"‎The simplicity of the Christ untangles the complexity of human affairs."

This afternoon, I have been cherishing the untangled, the uncluttered...the simple things that, as Jim Brickman sings in his song of the same title,  remain.   This poem is my heart's longing....in words:


I yearn for
simplicity...

precisely placed
goodness,
positioned by
a divine hand,

a small house,
clean windows
a few
books
water, sunlight,
and silence...
white linens, an apple,
and
unmeasured hours
filled with
love and honesty,
paper and
ink

words
written
thoughtfully,
beautifully,
simply,
with care...

I hunger for
the falling away
of all that
distracts and
complicates

Free from
the want of
more

living
in the space
of God-graced
thoughts

walking in the
path of
a holy
purpose

to be
completely,
fully,
wholly
satisfied

where
less
is
not more...
but All,
in all. 


May your hours be filled with simple things....and love, always with Love,


Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Clara Oyer Robertson Cooper 2010]

"Helplessly hoping..."

"…Wordlessly watching,
she waits by the window
And wonders,
at the empty place inside…"
-     Stephen Stills

I will write this ever so briefly, because once your hopes of healing are realized…after a long siege…you want to tell the world to never stop hoping.

Over twenty-five years.  For over twenty-five years I have watched at the window of my soul for a sign of healing, redemption, peace…a reason for my hope.

Over the years there were glimpses and glimmers of promise, a flickering of "perhaps" but I'd be swallowed up in darkness before I could see clearly. But today it came.  It came from out of the blue…like a flash of lightning across the night sky…lighting up the darkest places in my heart, and revealing all the good locked up inside like a widow's storage unit found full of redeemable treasures, just when the power was about to be turned off.

Over twenty-five years of hoping there was an answer…a reason for it all.  

And in one moment's flash of Bible-based inspiration I was healed, whole, restored, completely free…

Of all the healings I have ever had...this one means more...more than I can even say in words...

Someday I will feel ready to say more.  This isn't a post about "the healing", but a song of rejoicing, a ink-stained tear of gratitude, a psalm of encouragement to others who feel like "strangers on a barren shore, laboring long and lone…"(Mary Baker Eddy).

God does know us…He knows our hearts, and in His time we will know His reasons for it all. Never give up. Never give up on your self...and never give up on God.

Could I be silent?  Ah, never…

With gratitude, love and great peace,
Kate

"Our house...is very, very, very fine house..."

"...Come to me now
And rest your head for just five minutes
Everything is good
Such a cosy room
The windows are illuminated
By the sunshine through them
Fiery gems for you
Only for you

Our house is a very, very fine house..."
- Graham Nash

We are ready to walk
Out the door
We will soon flip the light switch and
Turn the key in the door for the last
Time

I have wept silent…and not so silent
Tears in these last few weeks
I have run my hands tenderly 
across your light-drenched window sills,
wrapped my arms around your strong newel posts
And tiptoed along your golden wide-pine floors
from my office to the kitchen in the middle of the night
staying up to wring every last moment from
these final weeks within the periwinkle and pear...
khaki and prairie grass sancutary you have
been for us...for me...

I have loved you well
You have been a retreat for my heart
When it was most lonely and
Frightened by choices
And unsettled by transitions that
Seemed impossible
Day after day after day…and
Night after night after long, long night

My daughter
Far from home in Africa
Last slept here
She knows me here
She imagines me in this kitchen with
The sun streaming through large casement window
And an old pine table holding steaming mugs of tea…
This is the last home where I made her bed or
A big bowl of Cream of Wheat
with lots of brown sugar.

This is the last house where her
Laughter bounced off photos from her childhood
And was absorbed in the softness of
Her well-loved quilts.
She will easily make the transition to a
New room in our new house just a few miles from here
When she returns home….

But I will have to wait till then
for  her perfume to linger on soft white pillow cases
Or to find her towel on the bathroom floor.

This house held the twins warm and safe
And cushioned their footsteps in the middle of the night
Her walls have heard their secrets and her
Windows have known their breath, visible on cold winter days.

This house launched our son on his journey towards
Manhood and welcomed our eldest daughter and her partner
Home from their first year out of college…

This house held her breath as I prayed and
Gave my husband a place to start anew.

This house
with her high ceilings and stained glass transoms
has been my friend, my confidante,
my shoulder to cry on….my home

This house has given me a place to learn that
I am stronger than I ever thought I could be
And that kindness is more valuable
Than gold.

This house will live in me always…
          As a home…

This house has raised me
          it has made me ready
     For our new house…
          Another home….

I have loved every moment ...
     in this house.
Kate

"We are one person..."

"...They are one person,
they are two alone,
they are three together,
they are for each other..."
- Stephen Stills

I love CSN's song "Helplessly Hoping." In the 1993 film Phenomenon John Travolta is transformed by a paranormal experience that increases his perspicacity.  He becomes a voracious reader with a hunger for information that is insatiable.  Sharing insights from the booth at a country fair he expounds on a fact that has his character animated with fascination. 

He explains that for many years scientists believed that an aspen grove near the Continental Divine in Western Colorado was a sea of individual trees.  Tens of thousands of willowy, delicate populas tremula stetching down the ravine, across a high country meadow and along the ridge at tree-line as far as you can see.   But in 1992 scientists discovered that it was one organism.

I had to know if this was just great film writing, or if it was true.  My research led me on a journey through scientific journals and academic papers, magazines and newspapers that confirmed the screenwriter's research.  One source reported  "Many people think when they're hiking through the mountains that they're hiking through an aspen forest, but in many cases what they're hiking through is aspen clones," says Dr. Jeffry Mitton of the University of Colorado. Along with two colleagues, Dr. Michael Grant and Dr. Yan Linhart, he nominated the system of cloned aspens as the world's biggest organism in a letter in the Nov. 19 issue of Nature. Common Root System

"If you could look into the soil and trace the roots of all these things that look like independent trees," Dr. Mitton said, "you would find that they are in fact connected by a common root system, like the leaves on a silver maple tree are connected by the branches and the main stem." As the organism sends out its roots, he explained, it also sends up new sprouts, called ramets.

The result, he said, is a single organism "that can literally climb over mountains and across meadows." (New York Times Dec. 15 1992)

This information stunned me in the most wonderful way.  It was the perfect illustration of something I had been pondering all summer…the nature of individuality.  The word "individual" comes from the root "in (not) divided".  But how often do we think that our individuality is found only in what makes us different from one another…what separates us.  But I was discovering that the root of our spiritual individuality is our indivisibility from our divine source, our wholeness…the root system. 

Just like each tree in the aspen grove, from above ground, seems to be an autonomous entity, but is in fact just a branch or offshoot of the source root system, so do we seem to be autonomous entitites with personal histories, proclivities, wills, impulses, and trajectories.   But are we really?  I am convinced that this is just a "surface" corporeal (or skin-defined) sense of what constitutes our individuality. 

Could it be that we are really just one undivided entity?  One divine whole.  With God, Mind, the source of all consciousness,  as our singular root system.  Could it be that it is only as we allow a very fine layer of dermis (skin) to convince us that everything inside that layer of skin is "me" (or you) and everything outside of this same layer of skin cells is not me (or you)…is something outside of our individual selfhood, or ego that we feel this separateness and isolation from one another. 

But, what if what we "are" is what is included in our consciousness, what we include in our thought, what we love,  embrace in our hearts.  And what if this is loving is impelled by a self-assertive Mind that is God.    What if what we call "free will" is really only an indication of how intimately near that Mind that is God is within our own being as consciousness? 

Perhaps we really are…

"…one person
…two alone
…three together
for eachother…"

It reminds me of the Biblical admonition,

"For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of that one body,
being many, are one body:
so also is Christ.
For the body is not one member, but many. 

If the foot shall say,
Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body;
is it therefore not of the body? 
And if the ear shall say,
Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body;
is it therefore not of the body? 
If the whole body were an eye,
where were the hearing?
If the whole were hearing,
where were the smelling? 

But now hath God set the members
every one of them in the body,
as it hath pleased him. 

And if they were all one member,
where were the body? 

But now are they many members,
yet but one body. 
And the eye cannot say unto the hand,
I have no need of thee:
nor again the head to the feet,
I have no need of you. 

Nay, much more those members of the body,
which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: 
And those members of the body,
which we think to be less honourable,
upon these we bestow more abundant honour;
and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. 
For our comely parts have no need:
but God hath tempered the body together,
having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: 
That there should be no schism in the body;
but that the members should have the same care one for another. 
And whether one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it;
or one member be honoured,
all the members rejoice with it. 
Now ye are the body of Christ..."

To me this means that we are all the same.  We all reflect the wholeness of the original.  We can all do EVERYTHING, but we have, in each moment been assigned an office, a task, a calling...sometimes honorable, sometimes comely, sometimes I may seem to be lacking, but in that lack I may give another the opportunity to be more abundant, generous, giving...and sometimes we may find ourselves humbled that another may discover their capacity for mercy or forgiveness.  

One "moment" I may be the foot of the body of Christ, another the hand, another the heart…but I, you, everyone…we are each, and all, wholly equipped as the full and complete offshoot of the rootsystem, capable of anything and everything that the rootsystem gives each of its offshoots the capacity to do, and to be. 

My individuality is not in my differences from you, or anyone else…my individuality is defined by my undivided-ness from the original…the root system.  My identity is discovered in my identical-ness with the Source…but then so is yours.

"...We are one person,
We are two alone,
We are three together
We are for eachother…"

Or, at least,  shouldn't we be…
Kate

Motherhood Knows No Color

I am discovering that motherhood changes us...alters our way of looking at the world around us...of listening to the way the world sings and speaks...and may even change what we think it is, or was,  saying....sometimes the the message is so arrestingly different, when listened to through those mother-ears, that it stops us in our tracks and resonates within our hearts in a new way...a way that transforms what was once simply the soundtrack of a particular period in history into a moment's inspiration...into a prayer...a message from God...speaking to universal humanity....universal motherhood...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

- Stephen Stills, 1970

A recent Backstory article in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Home Sweet Fortress" details reporter Scott Baldauf's adventures through the labyrinth of personal and home security in the city of his latest assignment, Johannesburg, South Africa.

A timely article for me.  Our daughter, Hannah, just returned to Johannesburg for another month before traveling on to her destination in a small coastal village outside of Capetown where she will spend the next year finishing her secondary education.

Hannah's epic journey to South Africa last summer was the subject of an article on safety in both the Monitor and on this Blog (scroll down October 3, 2006 blog "Securing Children's Safety" ).

When Hannah's dad and I traveled to South Africa in 1989 to pick her up as our newly adopted child, the country was in turmoil.  It was during the height of Apartheid. Our visit there was rife with red tape, governmental intimidation and uneasiness.  Under the surface you could almost feel the red veld itself under your feet, seething with repressed anger and pent up violence.  Hatred surfaced on the faces of the white government soldiers who as a matter of routine carried automatic weapons on the streets of both large cities and small towns.  That hatred was mirrored in the young black men who stood in darkened doorways with older model AK-47 rifles at the ready.  High walls and large dogs that characterized white neighborhoods all gave off an angry heat that made even the African sun pale by comparison.

One afternoon as my husband and I drove from the farm where we were staying to Johannesburg, we passed the local farm school that served the children of black farm workers in that township.  At first glance this could have been the modest playground of any private rural school.  The girls were dressed in pleated red and blue plaid skirts and collared polo shirts, the boys in navy pants or shorts and the same white shirts or red sweaters.  My husband, charmed by the sweet laughter of the young schoolboys playing a version of kickball in the yard and the little girls giggling as their friends moved in and out of double dutch jump rope, pulled our borrowed car to the side of the road to snap a photo or two. 

Looking closer, things came more clearly into focus.   Suddenly  the disparity between the scene in front of us and a schoolyard "back home" was arrestingly obvious.  The children were all black, all bare-footed. and all so thin.  Until we looked at the frail limbs poking out from voluminous shirt sleeves and pant legs which camouflaged their thinness, we were convinced we had been looking at healthy children at play.  But as arresting as this discovery was, it was not the most sobering element of what filled the lens of our camera and our hearts that afternoon.  Just out of focus, about 100 yards away in a field of tall grasses, South African Army tanks pointed directly at the schoolyard.

I felt a cold chill down my spine as I realized the depth to which the sharp blade of threat had been plunged daily into the hearts and minds of these children's parents as they weighed their child's education with their safety.  Insurgency was held at bay by the barrels of enormous military tanks pointed at small children.  The message of this silent threat was clear: their children could face what had happened thirteen years earlier when hundreds of young school children in Soweto, South Africa were massacred by South African police as the children and their parents protested inferior educational opportunities and demanded the right to be taught in their own language.  I felt faint with horror.

No wonder more than a million strong, intelligent black Africans had chosen not to take to the streets in opposition to the repression of their basic human rights.  It was love that kept them waiting for over twenty years....waiting for a Moses to march them peaceably out of bondage and bloodshed.  Our daughter was nine months old and we were back in the States when Nelson Mandela walked out of Robin's Island prison.  Hannah is now 17 and is a tall, beautiful, intelligent, proud South African citizen with dual American citizenship.  She possesses flashing green eyes and a heart for defending human rights wherever she sees them being violated...wherever and whenever someone is being treated without dignity...from a middle school classroom where her best friend was made fun of for speaking with an accent, to a Sunday School discussion where she opposed the characterization of those who supported same sex marriage as immoral. 

This same daughter, when asked about the crime and violence in Johannesburg that we often hear is the highest in the world, shared with us that, yes, there is a lot of crime and violence, and you have to be very, very alert and wise when you leave your gated, walled, security-system protected and dog-guarded home.  But, she also offered that when she is afraid or feels unsettled or threatened, she just looks for help from an older black woman.  Hannah explained that they have the kindest faces and are always willing to help you and protect you.  She went on to say they are like mothers and grandmothers to everyone and it doesn't matter that she is white...she is a child who needs care.

I can only pray my thanks to these women who once faced the horrors of daily threat to their own children's safety.  These women have strong hearts, tempered by the harshness of their past.  These same hearts have been made flexible and open, stretched from having cared for, loved, fed, clothed and in many ways educated the young white children of their employers while serving as housekeepers, nannies, maids and governesses.

When Hannah was born she was very ill and frail.  My first stop after leaving the hospital with her was our host's farm on the Botswana border where our host and her husband were entertaining friends, business colleagues, and their wives, for a holiday of safari.  When we arrived, Hannah was rather weak and I couldn't get her to take food.  I was surrounded by kindly, well-educated, white South Africans but it was the young black housekeeper, who already had a handful of children herself, who courageously stepped forward to take Hannah out of my arms that day.  The housekeeper later came to my bedroom on the farm and continued to breastfeed Hannah until she was strong enough to take milk more vigorously on her own.   This same housekeeper saw her own very young children off during a ten-mile walk each week to the local farm school.  She would leave them there and make the trek back to our host¢s "camp",  not seeing them again until she or her husband walked back to pick them up at the end of the week.

I think of this young woman today as I ponder my daughter's safety in the arms of the many Dorothy or Maria  "grandmothers" who respond to names  that an employer or sponsor gave them, not names in their native tongue that they were blessed with at birth.  I pray my thanks to them.  I send it over continents and oceans and hope it reaches them where they can be found embracing my daughter on a public bus, in an office building, or on a street corner...or most recently in the airplane lavatory on her trip here for her dad's wedding last month.  During her 15-hour flight Hannah became ill and turned to yet another kind South African black "grandmother" to help her.  This woman held her hair and cooed comfort in her ear through the long night above the Atlantic Ocean.

Nelson Mandela came out of Robin's Island and led his country out of hatred because he held the hearts of mothers who knew what it meant to love and to oppose violence wherever it raises its ugly head.

Motherhood knows no color....I feel secure in knowing that wherever there are mothers of any color, my daughter and her friends are safe and cared for.  I hope and pray that I have the opportunity be a "grandmother" for someone else's child today.  Join me....please...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

K

photo credit: photo of the children in the schoolyard was taken by
Dwight Oyer - May, 1989 - Randfontein, South Africa