TELLING THE CHILD ABOUT DEATH

What to tell the children when death comes? It will come, and it will come hard, striding down the street, or waiting in the yard. It will come, be we old or young, ready or not, braced and brave, or simply honest, and it will hurt. It is a hard transition to leave a loved one's hand and lay the body in the earth.

Those who die are quickly gone, a flash from being, into disappearing. No one knows how they travel, or fly, or reach that over-arching sky of wonder, once their fabric is torn asunder. No one knows if they are looking forward with surprise, or backwards, with tears in their eyes. Though we speculate, the mystery is far too greatend.

We do know how we feel. Suddenly, the beauty, and fragility and cost of love are real. Suddenly, the unpredictability of time and chance are seen to lead us in a tentative dance. We hold warm hearts close. We rearrange our ways to savour who we love the most. We worry, and form a tight protective ring, knowing that when death comes, we really couldn't do a thing.

Tell the children that part of life is sadness. They will understand. Tell them that all of us are part of something temporal, enwrapped in something grand. Tell them you love them, and that others love them too. Tell them that even though the hurt is there, the heart is also there, and will help them through.

Tell the children how you feel. Be honest in your anger and your tears. You are their anchor and their home. Model modesty and emotion in the face of our shared fears. Then, listen. Do not interrupt or make corrections. The touch of death is a corruption, and our little ones are also dying, and trying to make connections. Honour their reflections.


G.M.S.

Muscles

Old muscles are like familiar streets. We use them all the time, without thought, without suspicion that they'll never end. These are our connection, our natural direction. If you want to track me down, it's easy. I take the same routes every day, and hardly stray. From away to home, and home to a brief away.

Old muscles are as faithful as a dog, will log miles with you, sensing your patterns before you do. Throwing a ball for you to chase, pushing aside the social clutter to make a space to think your thoughts. Even bought you time to change the cadence of your step, as, of necessity, the years are adding up.

New muscles are a wake up call, or the sound of teenagers partying in the hall. The use of new language that sounds like swearing, as you are quickly coming to the end of enduring the changes that the pace of life arranges. New muscles require new memory, just when you thought you hadn't any. Just when you felt the old aches and pains were best, new ones come to put you to the test.

I am an older life on an aging frame. Most of what I've faced I do not care to face again. If someone tells me things I need to do, I listen and think them through. I try to find the simplest way to bend my sinews to display a pliant pose. How I'll ever get from here to there, God only knows. All I say when facing some heavy weight of learning set before me, "Please, in your youth, bear the weight it for me. Humour me in this, with muscles sweet, if you adore me!"

G.M.S.

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FOOL’S DAY MIRACLE

FOOL’S DAY MIRACLE

Easter arrived on Fools’ Day. Pulled a rabbit out of its hat, and no one could figure out the trick. The Power at the top changed the date and gave the world a fresh start, a new year. But the county folk, far from urban sophistication, failed to get the memo, and went right on living the calendar in their old and wagon-worn ways. April Fools!

Today, the Power at the top pulled a Saviour out of the tomb, and no one could believe our luck, a fresh start, a new eternity. The folk with the urban sophistication failed to love the moment, and went right on living their killing news in a dying world. April Fools! But the county folk smelled spring in their noses, and rain in the air, saw butterflies and bees in the wing, and, soon, sensed bounty in their barns.

There are Fools born ever minute, beholding miracle, and seeing nothing in it, sensing no eternal reason in a change of season, or life out of death, no grace in a gentle breath from a participating heaven, leaven for living, perceptions beyond a Fool’s, proving.
But we, the wide-eyed rubes of Easter Day, now see life another way. The raising of a Paragon is more than ruse, or rabbit. It is our whole new life, seen in one new day. We’d be the fools not to grab it!

G.M.S.

PASSING CANDLES

PASSING CANDLES

Five pascal candles are huddling in the shed. Each had its year of burning, each was ignited first on an Easter Eve, each carried down the long aisle before a procession of rising expectations. Each lit, Sunday by Sunday, season through season, greeting the changing faces of a congregation in all our changing times.

Stunted and bowed from the glowing, each is a sentinel to my life of service, in our lives together. Now they wait in long periods of darkness, their heralding done, their wax depleting, their stature diminished. I do love them, gnarled as they are. They are among my quiet treasures. I light them sometimes, remembering that they are the light of Christ. They rise and shine to the occasion, as troopers do. They flicker and burn with a brightness they enjoy, and then we talk and smile awhile, remembering that the Christ they carry, lives, lives in this little country corner, and in us.

G.M.S.

QUIET MORNING

QUIET MORNING

Quiet morning begins in a quiet heart, the noise of the day behind us, and good things to remind us how fortunate we are. A star lingers, as the light tiptoes down the stairs of night and onto the floor of expectation. We shall know elation, or perhaps a sense of doom, as quiet morning leads into a flowing afternoon.

Quiet moving, the earth, the years, woven, loose or tight, through the eyes of greeting and parting. We are only starting to feel our way, when, suddenly, it is yesterday. We need not fear the seeming permanence of our departing, every day, in our experience and dreams, the quiet morning seems to read our thoughts, and give us poetry worth quoting.

G.M.S.
“For the poet, Grace Difalco”

SCRIPTS OF MAGIC

SCRIPTS OF MAGIC

Perhaps the world turns on a tragedy, deeply sensed in the richest tales we tell; a garden lost, a brother murdering a brother, seduction by a king, and the death of an ill-conceived child, breaking the heart of her, who longed to be a mother. A voyage far from home, where terrors reign, and friends are lost, and the hero, now unrecognizable, is never really seen again. A space-shot to the moon, a faulty part, the size of a ballpoint pen, and soon, to ruin, the thing comes crashing down again.

We fly at risk, and garden at our peril. The hopes are always broad, but the way is narrow. Relationships ebb and flow, like the sea the bears us far. A star may beckon brightly, but we cannot follow if the compass bears a scar. It is tragic that we sicken, tragic that we die, tragic that the world we can imagine in our dreams, is more elusive than it seems, tragic that we must forsake the thing we love, tragic that we mirror these in the ways we move. We wear the bruising nobly, on our better days, shining with the rich and frail patina that our living makes. We creatures of such complexity deserve a kind of sympathy. Though the world is soaked and sown with tragic, we work and live with it, and write our simple scripts of magic.

G.M.S

STORM TROOPERS

STORM TROOPERS

Winter, like soldiers in a scattered war, does not know that General Spring has won. Missed the vanguard of robins calling fresh signals in the yard, failed to see the partisan squirrels unpacking their hoarded resources from their hiding place, and a pervasive sense of well-being, as sunlight, like a regimental marching band, comes streaming.

Winter sings it’s entrenched imperial song, hides in clusters in the broken grass, and in the shadows of skinny trees, when fresh breezes pass. Winter cannot believe that wider, and more welcome forces could relieve it of its weapons, and wish it to surrender to softer prospects, and a post-war world more tender.

So the news has come, and weary townsmen hunker down for one more blast of distant winds, and one more darkening of leaden skies, before the rain and sleet descend to fill our war torn eyes. A storm is once more in the offing. Can’t they hear the enemy brass scoffing from their prison cell? War is Hell, but even Hell must have a sweeter side, when April turns the calendar, and time, in passing, finally turns the tide.

G.M.S.