Potent obscurity

Yesterday at church all the children gathered in front and sang songs, complete with motions. I was sitting in the second row on the side and so had a good side-ways view into the inside of the group. One little girl caught my attention. She was standing behind a girl a good head taller than her. My guess is that from most other vantage points in the sanctuary she was nearly completely eclipsed and that few people could see any more of her than a glimpse of her blond hair or her red bow or the toe of her sparkling red Dorothy/Judy Garland shoes over multi-color striped socks. She seemed not to notice her obscurity. With earnesty and exactitude, she sang all the words and moved her hands at all the right times. She never tried to push herself forward or grab a spot in the front. She never stopped as if her hidden contribution didn't matter.

"And a child shall lead them."

New essay; new publication

A new print journal is entering the literary marketplace this month and I'm very excited to have an essay in its first issue. Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression debuts mid-November with a solid line-up of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

My contribution is a piece called "Nothing Can Separate," which weaves together the story of a friend's funeral and the story of my son's head injury. A friend of mine, Chad Gusler, also has a story in the issue. Some names you might recognize in the line-up include Luci Shaw and Scott Cairns.

Check it out at www.reliefjournal.com; click on "Current Issue" in the left sidebar.

If you like what you see I hope you'll consider ordering the first issue, or even a subscription. Doing so will deliver to your door a fresh collection of stories, essays, and poetry, as well as support the vision of this new publication—which is now being funded directly by the wallets of its editors.

Buechner on All Saints' Day

"On All Saints' Day, it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and the whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were  helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own."

Frederick Buechner, from The Sacred Journey

A wedding to remember

Just before the wedding party started their walk down the aisle, the singer/guitarist sang “I Want You to Be My Love” by Over the Rhine. That alone made me happy to be a guest yesterday at the wedding of a friend of my son’s. But there was more. There was the look of joy and eagerness on the face of the bride as she took her first few steps down the aisle and then stopped and looked back, realizing she had left her father behind, their arms unlinked. No matter, his face spoke understanding as he caught up. There was the serenade the groom sang for his bride--to her surprise--self-accompanied via ukelele. There was the love song--which I can’t now identify--sung by a friend with accompaniment by the best man with restrained accordian, lending a French promenade sort of romance. There were the vows, which were written by the couple but had the ring of wisdom beyond the years of these 22/23-year-olds. Here’s a funny thing: Although they had written their vows, they hadn’t memorized them, which turned out to be a mistake as they forgot to bring their written out copies. Fortunately, the best man realized this early on and using sign language discreetly signed to his wife in the congregation to find the laptop that held an electronic version of the vows. With stealth, she left her seat, exited the sanctuary, and scurried to find the laptop. Just when the vows were to be exchanged, she floated out from a door behind the minister--as if this had all been planned--holding open laptop and set it down on--was it the kneeling bar?--for the couple’s reference. The couple laughed. The congregation laughed, we liked this spontaneity, this resourcefulness rather than panic and consternation in response to imperfection and oversight. The groom went first, speaking a couple lines before bending down to find his place and keep going, vowing more and more of himself to her. Here’s something to pay attention to: The line he spoke after straightening up from one of his laptop glances was, “ I will never divorce you.” Because the groom bent down and looked at what he was about to say and stood back up again he had time to reconsider. But he didn’t reconsider; he said it, and she said it also when it came time for her vows, and I admired this intentional and public statement of will against the elephant in the room of till-death-do-we-part marriage. Here’s something else: They washed each other’s feet. This I’ve never seen at a wedding. While a reader read the Gospel passage of Christ washing the feet of his disciples, the bride sat down and the groom removed her sandals and proceeded to wash her feet with water in a silver bowl. The bride then rose and the groom sat. She removed his shoes and socks and returned the washing. I’ll admit this made me uncomfortable. Was it that it was such a breech from a traditional ceremony? Was it that I just didn’t want the bride to have bare feet under her white empire-waist dress or the groom to have bare feet under his charcoal gray suit? Was it that this young couple was modeling a humility to serve and be served, a vulnerability that can’t help but bring discomfort to those of us dressed in our wedding best thinking that we’ve got this marriage thing mastered? With the washing done, they knelt--with bare feet--while someone sang the great hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” The soloist sang the first two stanzas alone. Somewhere toward the beginning of the third stanza, some voices from the congregation started quietly singing along. More voices pitched in. The voices got louder and before more than a line or so from that last stanza had passed, the whole room was singing in unison. No words had been printed out. No motion for the congregation to join in had been given. It just happened and it was a beautiful thing: “...thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide; strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow--blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside! Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed thy hand hath provided--great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!” With laughter and clean feet, this young man and woman exchanged rings, kissed, were introduced as Mr. and Mrs., and headed off to reception, honeymoon, and life beyond.

Barbara Ehrenreich and United Professionals

Thursday night, my husband and I attended a talk and reading by Barbara Ehrenreich. She is the author of Bait and Switch and Nickel and Dimed, among a number of other books. To write Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich took on a series of blue-collar/minimum wage sorts of jobs, each for a month at a time, and then wrote about these experiences. I’ve not read the book so I can’t speak with too much authority on it but I think she did more than take on job after job, I think she tried to immerse herself in the culture of each job (as much as she could for those short periods of time) by living within the budget of the job salary, moving, etc. Her most recent book, Bait and Switch, is an investigation into white-collar unemployment, based on her experience of job hunting posing as a qualified job seeker.

Ehrenreich’s experiences in writing these two books has fueled a passion in her to do something concrete to help the “unemployed, underemployed and anxiously employed worker.“ Part of her action plan is the development of United Professionals. It is just getting up and running but her vision for it is a nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization that can provide networking, group health insurance, support, and advocacy. Chapters are forming across the country, including here in Minneapolis. For any of you who may be interested, here’s the website: www.unitedprofessionals.org.

This event was sponsored by Majors and Quinn, one of the few remaining independent bookstores in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

A new above average independent bookstore in St. Paul?

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have lost a number of great independent bookstores in recent years (as have all cities). The most recent to close was Bound To Be Read in St. Paul, and before that was Ruminator Books, formerly known as The Hungry Mind, also in St. Paul. Years before that Odegaard books closed, with sites in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, and I still miss the circular store with windows all around (sadly, the building later became a Chuckie Cheese’s).

This morning I read that our very own Garrison Keillor might be opening an independent bookstore in St. Paul on Selby and Western, not terribly far from where the others have closed and just underneath a coffee shop I like, across the street from a restaurant I like, and down the street from a paper store I like. What good news!

On the third day

A column of bones--one articular surface meeting another--is a beautiful sight. Particularly when there has previously been a gap, an angle, a tilting of that column. The solidity and straightness is no less beautiful with the aid of screws and pins and sutures.

The x-ray of my son's right hand taken yesterday, three days after his third surgery, was suitable for framing. From another view, the bones at the base of his hand, were like a double-rowed pearl bracelet, with a gentle natural--even if metal-aided--arc in its fit around the wrist. A masterpiece of integrity, proportion, and splendor with the surgeon as artist.

May the column and the arc stay in place. May it heal. May this son cross the country and get to college before the bell for his first class rings.