Baton Rouge – BethSings

Witness

How does a moment last forever?
How can a story never die?
It is love we must hold onto
Never easy, but we try
Sometimes our happiness is captured
Somehow, a time and place stand still
Love lives on inside our hearts and always will.

Last week I woke up vividly remembering a dream. It was the kind of dream that seems real and lingers. I was 8 or 9 years old sitting in a circle, singing with other children at the community center my mother once managed. I was leading a song. My mother was there in the distance. I couldn’t see her face but felt her presence, comforting and secure. All of us in that circle were connected through the music. What was happening seemed right and important.

The dream was a memory.

Journey Window – St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Baton Rouge, La.

That recollection has been with me for the last week. I thought of it again today as I witnessed a mother’s sad farewell to her son, a seventeen year old with a sparkling personality who I had the honor to teach. A bittersweet day in a myriad ways. Countless really.

Sometimes our happiness is captured with friends and family, frozen in time with stories that will live on. We’re blessed to have them and remember them. Moments that last as long as we do…..and beyond.

For now I’m content to continue dreaming….teaching…and learning until I find ‘my corner of the sky’…..

Corner of the Sky – Pippin

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The Sky is Falling

Wordpress Chicken Little

My maternal grandmother was a gentile southern woman. Quiet. I admired her spirit and spirituality. We shared a birthday and a love of cooking. There were only two places I’d spend the night when I was a child: Mama’s and my friend Leslie’s. For the past several months one of Mama’s stories has been with me……it’s time to let go.

ONE day Henny-Penny was picking up corn in the cornyard when–whack!–something hit her upon the head. ‘Goodness gracious me!’ said Henny-penny; ‘the sky’s a-going to fall; I must go and tell the king.’

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2016 called us to a place of soul-searching. What it meant to be family and neighbor. Ultimately, asking a moral question of who is my neighbor?

When the sky really is falling, a helping hand, a compassionate voice, a casserole….a boat….a sledge hammer, a bottle of water. It was a record-setting year….one that shaped characters and cities. For some, the sky fell when a ceiling might have been shattered conjuring images of a dystopian world: Lines drawn. Another piece of the sky fell. Fearful.

good-men

In these days of twenty-four hour news cycles and social media addiction have we forgotten intelligent discourse? Have we forgotten that the sky will not fall if we agree to disagree? That drawing lines in the sand is not always necessary…and that neighbors are not always next door.

2016 was tough, no doubt…..but if you asked my grandmother, who was born in 1901, so was 1917, 1929, 1941, 1959 and any number of other years, although she would never have talked about the difficulties.

The take-away is the sky didn’t fall because her generation figured it out without falling apart. While holding the sky up…they held each other.

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” —Cecil Beaton

Three months…..

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing”, thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.” Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Three months since the last blog. Last weekend my oldest friend and forever ‘sister’, Leslie asked ‘what happened to your blog’? July seems a lifetime away. Several times I sat down to write and edit photos but the stories both in photosand words came at a snail’s pace.

In all certainty the Summer of 2016 will be remembered. . .

Lazy days spent with family and friends.

Sweet hellos, bittersweet good-byes. gary-and-rosemary

Undoing and and rebuilding.

Army. Navy.

A region and people figuratively and literally inundated by tragedy….swallowed by the blessings of those same people.

Yesterday morning I woke up, disappointed, thinking–“Today the family was supposed to be in Boston”. Life sometimes changes our plans for us, but as Francie points out in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn contentment can be found embracing the “simple things”. We have much to look forward to….

Floods wash away tragedy. Friends move to be closer to family.

And so on this October 7, 2016…..Fall break…..here’s a thought:

“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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Yay family…..shake a little love….

Hear that old piano…

FullSizeRender (19) Like many people, last Saturday evening I gathered around a radio, computer, iPad or device of choice to listen to Garrison Keillor’s final “A Prairie Home Companion” broadcast. He became a Saturday evening staple when I first moved from Shreveport. His stories were like keepsakes of childhood family gatherings at my grandparents reminding me of my grandfather’s story-telling. I’ll miss those stories, that calm voice and music. Traveling to Lake Wobegon each week reminded us of the possibility to live a neighborly life.

My children were 3 years and 3 months old when I left behind my first adult job, a community and people I had come to love to move to Baton Rouge. With the exception of a few, Baton Rouge was slow to welcome. I haven’t been alone in that observation.

I grew up in a small North Louisiana town in the 1960’s with parents that worked to develop employment and educational opportunities and better living conditions for all people. It was not an easy task nor was it easily accepted but it was the right thing to do. I grew up believing that all people are neighbors. I still believe that.

Alton Sterling’s fatal shooting by two local policemen early Tuesday rocked our community creating division and discord as events such as this have created in so many other communities. Sorrow in families. Grief in the community at large. Anger for some. Fear in others. Emotions run high.

Yesterday I wasn’t fearful but wanted to hear a calm voice, a balm. There was little here in this city I’ve called home for most of my adult life. The last thought before I went to sleep last night were these words from Psalm 30: At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn, rejoicing. The rejoicing will be slow for families or communities who have suffered tragic losses until we’re able to look into a person’s soul find common ground then ask who is my neighbor.

Over the decades I’ve witnessed this city’s citizens’ indifference and intolerance as well as an immense capacity for compassion and mercy . Unity. Calm. Compassion.

Hear that old piano….

Mahalia Jackson- His Eye is On the Sparrow