Friday, April 19, 2013

I'll Remember You

Finding Serenity

One of the most precious gifts I have received in the last few years is that I am now back in touch with beloved friends of childhood.  I appreciate them ever so much, especially with all the turmoil and insecurity in the world today.

I have lived my life like a vagabond or a tumble weed, so I was delighted to be part of the committee to put together our 40th high school class reunion.  After many years of moving to new places and being part of new church communities, work places, neighborhoods, etc, I rejoice to be back (at least virtually if not always in person) amongst people who have known me since I was little or a teen.  Keeping in touch with old friends by phone letter, e-mail, social media has been wonderful.

Now I again have people in my life to whom I have to explain nothing about where I grew up, who my parents are, and many other pieces of information I share when I get to know people in places that are not my heart home.

I was a city girl, born on the South Side of Chicago.  But during the summer of the year I turned eight, we moved to a house on Tower Lakes.  A little community surrounding several small lakes, seven miles north of the Village of Barrington and two miles south of Wauconda, we thought we were in paradise.  The Village of Barrington, where our church is, and where we attended high school, is forty-five miles northwest of Chicago on what used to be called the Chicago and Northwestern Line.  The village is criss-crossed by transportation and in the midst of boundaries. 

US Route 59 goes right through the middle of the village north-south axis.  Within the boundaries of the village the road is known as Hough Street.  The other central axis is County Line Road, called Main Street inside the village's borders. 

Certain times of the day, if you were going almost anywhere and had to go through the village you might be stopped at passenger train crossings in three or four different places, and at two or three commercial train intersections.  If you were driving anywhere near the Barrington High right after the last bell of the day, you were in trouble if you weren't patient and vigilant.

The gently rolling countryside of the Fox River Valley encompassed our new world.  Most rivers either flowed into tributaries of the Mississippi like the DesPlaines, the Illinois, and the Kankakee.  Creeks, streams and lakes made up the watershed, too.

For city kids used to the right angled streets and diagonal main thoroughfares of the Chicago urban geometry spokes, my brother, sister and I delighted in traveling on roads based on Algonquin Native American trails through kettle moraine forests and cow paths through hillsides covered with deep prairie grass.

Our house was right on the main lake across from two islands that rose up out of what had been a spring-fed swamp before the overflow was dammed up by an enterprising Armenian man, his family members and friends.  When you see Tower Lakes on a map, it looks a bit like an "L" with the base of the "letter" sitting east/west, the vertical part almost completely north/south.  Our house was on the northern shore of the east/west part, closer to Highway 59 than to the open fields on the western boundary not far from the Fox River.

Besides the two islands across from our house, Snake Island on the left and Devil's Island on the right, there were four islands on the vertical section.  A suspension bridge cuts across the lake just north of the intersection of the east/west part and the north/south section.

Duck Island is right north of the Big Bridge.  It is flat with tall pine trees on it.  There used to be a little bridge to it, but when we were kids there no longer was.  Along the shore of the lake from the road leading to the Big Bridge there is a path that leads to the three islands on the northeast part of the vertical section.  Beach Island, Rest Island and Boat Island all have bridges to them, and community gatherings have always taken place on them. 

The suspension bridge between Beach Island and Rest Island has only one tower on each island, whereas the Big Bridge has two towers in the middle of the lake and three sections of its span.  Below is an aerial view of the main lake from over Rest Island and Beach Island with a view of Duck Island and the Big Bridge.  Our house was to the left of the top left corner of the photo, out of sight.  The edge of Devil's Island can be seen in that top left corner, too.



It has just occurred to me that I started out talking about people and ended up talking about a place.  Of course the two are inexorably linked.

Tower Lakes had a governing body called "The Tower Lakes Improvement Association" in our time.  And when we were teens, we formed an organization called "The Tower Lakers."  Even before we formed the organization, we would all hang out at the beach together all summer, rake leaves for people who couldn't get out to do that, and generally enjoy each other throughout the year.

We had row boats, canoes and sail boats.  Since the lakes were not big enough for motor boats, we enjoyed tranquility and fun.  During spring, summer and fall we fished, sailed, had races and water "battles."  In the winter we skated, sledded and tobogganed. 

Friends from the other lake communities and countryside near us came over.  We went to North Barrington Elementary School with kids from Timberlake, Biltmore, Indian Trail, Arrowhead Lane, Kelsey Road and Miller Road, all the way up to Signal Hill Road.  These days there are lots and lots more houses and the flows of traffic are different, but we can still find our way.  The next town over, Lake Zurich is still recognizable. 

Even though there is more traffic, and even a motel on Roberts Road heading towards River Road along the Fox, familiar landmarks can be found.

Wauconda, Wonder Lake, Crystal Lake, Fox Lake, Woodstock and McHenry are still surrounded by farms, though fewer than when we were growing up.

Beyond Lake Zurich is the old drive-in movie theater and Long Grove where you can find antiques and enjoy a day of wandering around, finding bargains and delights, and enjoying good food and drinks.  Buffalo Grove and other towns led to the larger suburbs perched on Lake Michigan north of Chicago all the way to the Wisconsin State line.

We dwelt in relative safety and security then.  All the parents of our friends knew one another at least slightly and some very well.  We had slumber parties, holiday parties, birthday parties and outings.  By the time we got to be teens we even had moms and dads who would chaperone us to Beatles' concerts, to the Riverview Ramble, to downtown Chicago when rock bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders and groups from American Bandstand played at the Stock Yards. 

The older we became the greater our range of fun and travel extended.  As high school seniors, we staged our Ditch Day beginning with breakfast on Zion Beach State Park, maybe, or I'm not sure I remember exactly where.  We sat around a camp fire in the early spring cold and watched the sun emerge from the cold, cold deep beautiful lake.  And we reflected on how soon we would all be dispersed mostly to various colleges, excited and sad at the same time.

Now we have been re-gathered -- at least most of us.  We chat on Facebook and have each others' phone numbers and addresses.   Some of us are grandparents, some of us have lost one or more of our parents.  As we have gotten back in touch and shared the stories of our lives, we have learned of tragedies and joy.  Even when it has been twenty or thirty years, we still recognize voices on the phone.

We see one another again and reconcile the vision of what we looked like then to what we look like now.  And laugh.  Some of us have had interesting jobs.  A few still or again play in rock bands like those who gave us the music of our generation at high school sock-hops and dances.

When we are together we have the joy and security of the certainty that we are, each one of us, personally known in ways that no one we have met since we grew up really knows us.

That's what I appreciate the most.

Below are some links so you can visualize the places of my heart home if you care to do that.

Hope you have a lovely day, Beloved. 

Village of Barrington

Village of Tower Lakes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NOAH


My first grandson, Noah, was born sixteen years ago today during the cosmic time of the Hale Bop Comet's latest visit to our Earth's environs. The night before he was born while my daughter Krista was in labor, Noah's dad's mom and dad and I held vigil together back at Noah's first home.  Noah's dad was at the hospital with Krista, of course.

Sometime in the night while sitting on the couch in the living room, I dozed off a bit and "saw" the scene of a party.  The room in the dream or vision was decorated just the way my sister and I used to dress up rooms for children's birthday parties when we were asked to help out with them by parents of kids we used to babysit.  There were balloons, banners and streamers; cake ice cream and candy; party hats and little stations where anyone who desired could play games from our childhood like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," "Drop the Clothes Pin in the Milk Bottle;" and entertainments from my kids' childhood with piƱatas and VHS cartoons.  Children of all ages were there.  The adults stood or sat around chatting.  We all seemed to be enjoying one another immensely.

In the vision or dream everyone who is related to us, but already passed on was there.  The spirits of people we love who are still on Earth were there, too.  And in case you didn't guess already, the party was in celebration of Noah's trip to the Earthly part of his eternal life.  It seems to me that almost everyone looks like they are in their thirties in visions like that, but Noah seemed to be about eighteen -- and children and babies were there, too.  Noah was tall and slim like his dad, and had twinkles in his eyes. 

As the party-goers celebrated with Noah, at one point he turned to me and said, "Gramma, we are going to have SO MUCH FUN!"

And we have!  

I told Noah's other grandma and grandpa about the dream or vision when we got the call to go to the hospital to meet Noah in person.

It's not anything I ever told the ordination board when I was first starting out as a pastor, though. 

*twinkle*

In the fall of '99 when I first started writing the "Drinks of Living Waters" devotions, I wrote a lot about Noah because I was blessed to be able to spend chunks of time with him.
I was also blessed to be able to baptize him in one of the churches I served in the Three-Point Jefferson Charge near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  Noah and his parents were presented to the other two churches, too, and the parishioners were so very kind to celebrate his life and baptism with us.

My Dad's father was a Methodist minister ordained in England.  After he, my grandmother, two of my dad's sisters and many other relatives emigrated to Canada and the US from the Birmingham, England suburb of Walsall, Grandpa served churches while also building houses.  He baptized my older cousins, my brother and me, and one or two cousins born in my year group before passing away when I was fifteen months old.  We were blessed.

And my kids' Dad's father was mostly Cherokee, the son of a Methodist pastor in rural Alabama.  After a career in the U.S. Army that began during the Korean Conflict, included helping to run the railroads in occupied Japan (where he met and married my kids' Japanese grandmother) and jungle training recruits when the U.S. supposedly only had advisors in Southeast Asia, he became a pastor in the Central Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church.

So my kids' Grandpa Tom baptized them, too.  Such a blessing!

Therefore, when I celebrated the baptism of Noah, he was the first of the third generation of babies in our family to be baptized by a pastor grandparent.

God is so good and so faithful.  If you feel led, please pray for Noah, for Krista, and for all of us.  The Lord knows our needs and His good plans.

Hope you are aware of your blessings today, Beloved.  And I trust that if you have burdens, worries, fears or doubts that you will lay them down at the foot of the Cross and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you.

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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Deep Calls to Deep

Good morning, Beloved. Deep calls to deep. Where is that from in the Bible? Will have to look it up.

 

Ah, yes! 

 



 All night was dreaming of the dearly departed, memories triggered by the recent turmoil coinciding with "anniversaries" of trauma I experienced. Also saw a National Geographic documentary DVD about Denali with Dad before going to bed. The last part of the film showed mountain climbers and tallied up
accidents. Up to the time that the program was made, 43 climbers had fallen to their deaths including an F-15 pilot friend of mine. Mark was climbing with two other pilots and a brother of one pilot. We lived off base in Eagle River and the CH-3 "Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopters flew over our house in the dead of night on the way to Denali.

Mark had slipped and fallen 2,000 ' while they were making camp. They had hoped to reach the summit the following day.

Several weeks later Mark's only child, a daughter, was born.

For all you guys who have gone before us and are still with us in Spirit -- and for all my women friends who are now on the other side of the veil, too, I will remember you.

(Sorry to be maudlin, Beloved.)

We need to turn prayers for peace and non-violence into deliberate action, united with one another, not divided.

Earlier in the evening Dad and I were watching the first episodes of Ken Burn's "The Civil War.". I was struck by a quote from Lincoln from the 1850's. (Will look it up to be sure.)

He wrote or said that our nation, based on our ideals, not on territory or ethnic heritage can never be defeated from the outside. Only a kind of suicide because of inner strife can defeat us.

What would it take to bridge the gaps?

There is such a spirit of domination and oppression working in the rise of groups intent on hatred and violence to remain in power.

Do you think sometimes that they are afraid of being treated as they have treated others.

Starting in each heart, if only there was a will to guarantee every other person the liberties, opportunities and peace each of us desires for our selves, our families, and our communities, that would be a start.

No one deserves the blessings of freedom: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness if that person is denying the same to others.

When we sow hatred, we reap oppression and violence.

When we sow bigotry, we reap soul death.

When we sow greed, we reap poverty, disease and death.

When we sow domination, we reap destruction.

We have never, ever lived up to the vision of our forbears. The more we count on violence and the threat of violence and engender fear, the closer we get to completely losing the possibility of fulfilling our heart's desires.

Enough is enough.

We can't let sick, paranoid greed-obsessed people continue to be the rule-makers. The trials to come are so heinous as to be indescribable.

The course we have stubbornly set upon, justifying our selves along the way puts our generations and our posterity at great risk.

Since the first human being had the heart to pick up rocks to kill another human being, violence and death have prospered. No from the first slingshot and spear, every weapon that has been developed has been used.

If used, the kinds of weapons we have today will not destroy the Earth, but can go a long way toward destroying most life and certainly all of humanity.

If you think the 20th century was bad, just wait to see all that has already been put into motion.

But I believe that with God's help, changed hearts and actions that have peace and justice for all as their goal, that we can turn the tide.

For our children's sakes and for their children's sakes we MUST.


Thursday, April 11, 2013

CHARIOTS OF FIRE


Tonight I was watching "The Miracle of Israel" narrated by Leonard Nimoy on PBS.  Some veterans of the war that began after the establishment of Israel were talking about miracles, and one of them said that he was lying wounded where he had been run over by a Syrian tank.  while unable to move, he saw some Syrian troops turn back toward them, but there were angels in the field protecting him.  The Syrian troops saw them and turned back.

I was struck by many witnesses to the miracles because when I was serving as an Air Force Officer working with F-15 pilots who intercepted Soviet bombers along the coasts of Alaska I heard about something very extraordinary.  We often hosted squadrons of other fighter planes to exercise with us  during the summer, just as we visited other places, including a squadron of F-15 pilots in Komatsu, Japan in the spring of 1985. 

Most of the time our visitors came from the US, but during the summer of 1985, our fighter wing had visitors from Israel.  They were pilots from an F-15 squadron and flew in exercises with our pilots.  I happened to have been on leave in the Lower Forty-Eight, as Alaskans call the non-contiguous 48 states, so I was sorry not to have met them.

Nevertheless, when I returned to Alaska and caught up on what had happened while I was gone, I was touched to see a beautiful photograph of Israeli F-15s in formation over Masada. 

As you probably know, Masada is a fortress on a mountain top in the Judean Desert built by the Idumean King, Herod the Great from 37-31 B.C.  As reported by the Roman historian Josephus Flavius, during the Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire in 66 A.D., Masada became the site of a last stand by the Zealot rebels. 

Besieged by the Roman army around 1,000 people perished in fires they started by themselves in the Masada fortress rather than be taken by the Roman soldiers.  Then in 70 A.D., Jerusalem was sacked, the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish inhabitants of the Roman province of Palestine, the territory of Israel and Judea were killed or fled the area. 

Masada

According to some people of faith and biblical scholars, there are prophecies about the Jewish return to the Holy Land in the writings of every prophet in The Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament) except for the Book of Jonah.  In 1948, nearly 2000 years after the Dispersal, those prophecies were fulfilled when the modern State of Israel was created. 

In honor of the Masada martyrs, there is a kind of battle cry concerning their sacrifice that reflects the attitude of the Jewish people concerning their homeland.  This battle cry was written as a  caption over the photograph of the Israeli F-15s over Masada: "Never Again."  All the members of the squadron who visited us signed their names around the border.

I was very touched to see the photo, but the most amazing revelation about the visit of the Israeli F-15 pilots was something my American F-15 pilot friends told me.  Some of the Israeli pilots had been on active duty in 1982 during that part of the Lebanon conflict.

Lebanon Conflict

All military pilots spend time talking about their feats of flying, especially if they have been in combat.  During a time of sharing these types of stories, one of the Israeli pilots told my friends about something he saw when he was flying in support of the military operation.  He said that when he and a flight of F-15s were flying near the Golan Heights during the conflict, that they saw chariots of fire with angels suspended over the area!  He credited the Lord and the angels with their victory.

Let me affirm that these were very rational men.  Many of them were well-educated aeronautical engineers.  They were, for the most part, not the kinds of people you would think would be prone to expressing whimsical or fantastic ideas or images.  And at the time every fighter pilot I knew and everyone interested in flying identified the music "Chariots of Fire" by Vangelis with fighter pilots and their jets.

The biblical reference "chariots of fire" comes from the narration about Elisha in 2Kings 6:8-18. 

Elisha and the Chariots of Fire

You can look it up if you feel like it sometime.

Anyway . . . I just thought I would share that with you.   

If you get a chance to watch the program, I think you might be interested.  I especially enjoyed the references to miracles and to prophecies that have been fulfilled -- and prophecies still to come.  If you haven't seen it, you might want to sometime --

The Miracle of Israel

Hope you will have a peaceful night's rest Beloved, with dreams of God's angels who watch over you and everyone you love.

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