Ashegon Lake

Our theme for this week: Kinship

This is a picture of the most beautiful place in the world.

I know what you're thinking. This is hardly picturesque. The water is grey-black and what's with that old raft? This may be many things, but it is certainly not beautiful.

It is a photograph taken from the screened in porch of my family's cabin in Northern Wisconsin. That's my Gran on the dock along with my younger brother. Grandma built the cabin with my grandfather 50 years ago. It's the place where my brothers, cousins, and I all passed our summers.

I had, overwhelmingly, a really beautiful childhood complete with brothers with whom I could fight, a big shaggy dog, and a lovely big backyard with a fort and a tree to climb. But summers at the lake were perfect. We swam, played cards and ate ice cream with our great aunt, had campfires, told ghost stories, hiked and most importantly, learned to fish.

My entire family fishes, including my 86 year old grandmother. It's one of the few enjoyments that we all share (that and a love for Jarts) and can do very amicably as a family. It's something I do very rarely now that I live in Minnesota, but every year I meet my folks at the cabin for a weekend during their vacation. Pa and I usually head out at least once to go fishing together and it is a moment I cherish every year. It's a moment to remember and offer a small prayer of gratitude for my life and keep those memories and relationships as part of my present.

***

Ashegon Lake

The sun has already gone behind the ring of trees

surrounding the lake when Dad fires up the motor

on Grandma's old boat. I run down the three concrete steps,

step off the dock and into the boat beside him,

careful not to spill the worms we dug out of the earth earlier.

My hands are dirty, like his, as are my jeans and old shoes.

I drop a cooler full of PBR and a bucket behind us and off we go.

When we get to the beaver dam, I'll dangle my feet in the water.

He'll cast and have a fish before I'm finished untangling my line

and cussing the slipperiness of the worms.

We'll talk, a little, He'll tell me how he met Mom, ask about work.

But mainly, we'll drink our beer, fish for smallmouth and panfish,

anticipating the crackle and pop they'll make

filleted and frying in a pan of hot oil

Hiatus

Sorry for the unannounced break in posting folks. For the past two weeks, I've been hidden in the library taking my comprehensive exam for my M.A. in theology. All the hard work paid off, and I passed with honors yesterday afternoon. Lauren has been providing some much needed mental, spiritual, and emotional support during this time period, so we've both been otherwise occupied. Regular posting will resume this weekend with the theme: kinship.

Heartbeat of Christ

One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ side. So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant. He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him, “Master, who is it?”

(John 13:23-25)

A few facts: I am terrified of flying. The thought of being on a plane shortens my breath, causes me to clench my fists, induces a mild panic. Nor am I medically inclined. I have not studied medicine and I tend to avoid the doctor’s office. Nor do I consider myself a missionary Christian. Sure, other people find it necessary and important to go to other countries and minister, but that type of ministry is not for me.

Imagine my surprise, then, when family friends invited me on a medical mission trip to the Dominican Republic during my senior year of college. After a bit of hesitation (a plane!), I agreed to go. Being in the Dominican was, as all mission trips are reported to be, a life-changing experience. Every day our team of doctors, nurses, and random folks invited by family friends traveled to a different batey (the villages where the sugar-cane workers and their families live) in order to see villagers and attempt, in some small way, to heal.

During the first few days of our trip my job was to hand out gifts—toothbrushes, little toys, soap, T-shirts—to the people who were leaving our makeshift clinic. On the third day we arrived in a batey that was worse than any of the others we had visited. Whereas other bateyes were mostly clean, children were clothed, and houses were at least somewhat substantial, this batey was littered with trash, children ran around naked and shoeless, and homes were inadequate at best.

On this day I was given the opportunity to sit with one of the doctors while he saw patients. They described their symptoms—back pain, difficulty urinating, itchy eyes—and he prescribed what remedies he could. One of the women who came to Dr. Ron brought her toddler with her. Mother and child were both healthy; this mom simply wanted a check-up. Dr. Ron went through the normal routine: listened to the two-year-old’s heart, looked at her eyes, examined her ears, checked her reflexes.

After the examination he took his stethoscope from around his neck, placed the earpieces in the mother’s ears and allowed her to listen to her daughter’s heart.

The woman’s eyes filled with wonder, mine with tears. She had not heard her daughter’s heartbeat before and here it was, this life moving and flowing in the daughter she had birthed about two years before.

As I watched this interaction, I could not help but think of my cousin Rachel who was about the same age as this little girl. My aunt and uncle had heard Rachel’s heartbeat when she was in utero; I had thought it common for parents to hear the heartbeat of their children before they are born, and, indeed, in America it is. For this woman, though, it was gift, pure and simple.

Heartbeats are intimate. They are life, existence, reality. With them, we begin; without them, we cease. This interaction between mother and child contains the essence of my time in the Dominican.

In one of my theology classes, prior to my trip to the Dominican, the professor related a quote of one of his mentors: “Keep in mind,” he said, “that the most important action in the universe is the heartbeat of Christ.” As he explained it, this was a cosmological phenomenon—the beauty of right relationship, the attentiveness we are called to have to Christ present in our world. But as I watched this mother listen to her child’s heart, it occurred to me that there too was the heartbeat of Christ.

Possibility

This week's theme: Bread

I was accused a few weeks ago of not being very spontaneous. The conversation actually began based on my own admission of being a very difficult person to date. The person who made the accusation agreed, mainly because my standards are preposterously high (somewhere out there is my Mr. Darcy) and because, apparently, I am lacking in spontaneity.

At first I was offended by these remarks, particularly as we had begun our friendship rather recently. More importantly, having a Benedictine whose life is based on the recurring rhythms of work and prayer tell you that you're not spontaneous enough is a bit like having a reality TV star tell you that you're a narcissist. Yet, since that conversation I've been more attentive to the value I place on routine. I was shocked to discover that I am defined by my routines. Some of them make sense. I follow a prescribed pattern before I go to bed every night because I suffer from insomnia and the routine helps me fall asleep. I am in the library four nights a week because I'm worried about passing comps. But other routines (the way my morning starts, my exact time for eating lunch every day, the time at which I take my walk) are just patterns. They have no significance aside from the fact that I do these things at these times every day. This in itself is not a bad thing. However, the fact that when the routine is changed I become terribly angry is deeply problematic.

I am not spontaneous.

This lack of spontaneity has nothing to do with this week's theme of bread. Rather, it was my reflections on making bread (which is not something one does spontaneously) and sharing bread that brought me to think of this conversation. My deepest apologies to Lauren, but I've admirably circumvented the theme for this week.

I'm not sold on the poem's title and would happily take suggestions

***

Possibility

Tomorrow morning, you'll wake early,

pack a basket full of fruit and wine,

cold-press coffee and bread we baked together.

You'll put this in the backseat of the car,

along with the quilt your mother made us

and the copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover

you've been reading to me before I fall asleep.

You'll wake me when you're finished

and hand me the phone so I can call in sick.

We'll spend the entire day taking long walks and later,

lying on the quilt reading aloud to one another,

perhaps even letting the novel inspire us to reenact a scene or two.

Exhausted, we'll return home. Each already reveling in memories of the afternoon.

Although, it is possible that when you come to wake me

I'll remember my calendar full of appointments, the printer deadline

that must be met, the phone calls that have to be returned,

and that it's absolutely necessary that you return that bike lock to the store.