Tombstones, wood storks and breathing room

     What do I want people to say about me after I die? Do you ever think about things like that, or am I just really morbid? Maybe it's because death is something I encounter all the time as a hospital chaplain. Or maybe it's because Easter got me thinking about death and all that comes after it. There's also the fact that I recently met up with family for a trip to Savannah, where we visited Bonaventure Cemetery. My aunt Sharon is an amateur photographer, and the ancient tombstones and moss draped trees gave her lots of potential pictures. I enjoyed reading the narrative inscriptions on centuries-old headstones, like this one: 

      "The religion of the cross she understood with uncommon discernment and regarded it in her life with humility and with reverence. On her death bed she found its consolation with delightful peace and hope, and at the close of a distressing disease fell into a sweet sleep and left the world without a struggle. Fair stranger, mayest thou live and die in the same manner." 

        Apart from the distressing disease part, I would be pretty happy if that could be written on my tombstone (or in my obituary, since I plan to be cremated). It's one of the best epitaphs this "fair stranger" has ever read.

SS

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      I find myself becoming enchanted with the idea of breathing room.  In our 24/7 wifi connected lives, with our ipads and our smart phones, we are always on, typing, reading, listening, working, playing absurd games on tiny screens.  Our daily schedules are so busy that finding time for coffee with a friend turns into a calendar challenge.    I find myself savoring the moments when all the beeping, winking gadgets are turned off, nothing is scheduled and I can just breathe.   I've started scheduling myself a few hours here and there just to be.  I pull up an hour on my digital calendar and label it "breathing room."  It's an hour of free space - to turn off the phone and the computer and sit on the back porch or walk on the beach.   It's time to breathe.

AF

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Blessings in the Unexpected

      A friend of mine noticed the beautiful dogwoods blooming in winter chill winds and remarked, “Oh, it’s a dogwood winter.” I had never heard that particular expression, but liked it and decided to go in search of a dogwood photo at one of my favorite local parks. I walked and walked, passing camellia and azalea blossoms battling out the transition from winter to spring. Nowhere could I find a single blooming dogwood. Resigned to look elsewhere, I started on a path back home and stopped to observe an unusually large egret. Inching closer, I found it actually was a wood stork with its hideous vulture head topping a delicate plume of white and black feathers like some kind of dinosaur bird hybrid. I’m used to seeing these birds in Florida, but not so much here. 

      As I left the park wondering where to go to get my dogwood tree, I realized I already had my blog topic. When I let go of my expectation and saw the blessing before me, the reptilian head started growing on me. I decided to let go of my expectations and dwell on the stork’s blessing. 

     I found out this remarkable creature with its five-foot wingspan puts its open bill in the water and waits for the touch of a wandering fish. When it feels a fish, it can snap its bill shut in as little as 25 milliseconds, which according to National Geographic is an incredibly quick reaction time matched by few other vertebrates. Who knew? What a great spiritual metaphor about being still and waiting when it’s time for that and lightning quick to action when it’s time for that. I usually have it in reverse. I fail to wait on God and jump headlong into a situation and often when I sense the spirit moving me, I hem and haw too long.

        To me Easter in part is about opening to how Jesus surprises us and shows up unexpectedly. It’s about seeing the blessings in not getting the expected, about how an ugly little vulture head can grow on you.

DB

A half marathon, beauty and a tombstone

 3 days, 9 hours, 44 minutes

While everyone else is busy setting goals and making resolutions for 2012,  I am still working on a dream from 2011. Maybe it was turning 50 and realizing that some things are sliding into the “now or never” category, but, for whatever reason,  I signed up for my very first  half marathon.   I’ve been a runner since high school -  in the early years of Title IX when I ran on the boys cross country team.  I’ve done 5Ks and 10Ks.  But, I had never tried this distance and had to register in the "50-54" age group.  

Ever so slowly, a quarter mile at a time, I began adding mileage and working my way up the distance ladder.  My body parts, however, were not so sure.  Each run started with aches, creaky old knees that were slow to warm up, IT band issues, complaints from my ankles, shins and an old broken toe.  I was whiny.  I was cold.  I was too hot.  My pace was too slow.  What was I thinking?  But, for most runs, by mile 3, I was in the zone and determined to finish.  

I’m old and I'm slow, but I'm still running and down to 3 days, 9 hours, and 44 minutes to the starting gun for the Charleston Marathon.   I’ll keep you posted.

AF

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 Beauty as Diet Aid

            I would like to say I’m a strong, disciplined person, set on following through with my healthy living resolutions. The fact of the matter, alas, is I’m weak. I need incentives, rewards, perks, friends and the like to prod me along. My tumbler, pictured left, was a Christmas splurge for myself. Its purpose is twofold. One it reminds me of lessons learned when I did a 21-day detox diet with a fellow co-worker last year just before Thanksgiving. She is a wonderful cook and a foodie who felt sorry for my uncreative diet and thought this would be a good way to refresh my palate. She was right.

            Two, it’s pretty. I like looking at it. The tumbler reminds me of the simple things I can do that can make a big difference. Small investments in health can reap big benefits.  One big advantage of the diet is that it retrained my taste buds and got me off my high sugar load. Spiritually, it reminded me that stripping away excesses and getting back to basics always is good for the soul.

DB

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       I couldn't read his name when I happened upon his tombstone beside the

marsh.  There were a half dozen others scattered among the trees,

relocated a few years ago from where they had rested for decades or

centuries before Interstate 526 needed them to make way.  I read aloud

the names on those I could decipher.  I couldn't say why, except that

I liked the thought of someone hundreds of years from now doing

likewise if she came across my name on an ancient stone.  But the top

half of this stone had broken off who knows how long ago.  There was

no name to read, only the epitaph.  "The latter departed this life the

29th of June 1808 after a long and tedious decline which he endured

with meek resignation to the will of God. Aged 23 years and 8 months."

       Questions flooded my mind.  Who wrote the epitaph?  What was his

illness?  Just how long was his decline?  Who took care of him?  Did

he live his whole life in Charleston?  What kind of medical care was

available here in the early 1800s?  But most of all what I wondered

about was his "meek resignation to the will of God."