In an in-between summer in seminary, I was a mother’s helper for the Quereau family, all of whom I still know and love. To my delight we spent the summer at the grandparents’ home on Spruce-head Island, Maine. It was a beautiful place, right on the ocean with the sound of waves splashing on the rocky shore the constant chorus in our background. It was a wondrous place for a three year old who was my primary responsibility. We climbed and played and talked and read and every now and then would go to the island store where her mother and I indulged in fire-balls. Besides Kenna, the three year old, there were infant twins, Bret and Lehna, who consumed much of their parents’ time. All in all, it was a first hand view of what it meant to be a mom. I looked at their mom, Gay, as the role model for my own parenting and am pleased that my own son seems to be growing into the same kind, good and happy souls the three of them are now.

My days off I spent adventuring along the Maine coast, a wonder for a young woman who had grown up in Wisconsin, gone to college in Iowa, and saw an ocean for the first time when she went abroad to study at age 21. I was equally fascinated by the history of the place---Wisconsin and Iowa were downright modern com-pared to the East Coast. So I found myself traipsing through grave yards, doing rubbings. I had started in New Haven, CT. that spring and found gravestones just as old and fascinating in Maine.

It was in Thomaston that I found the stone that told me what I was beginning to understand from be-ing a mother’s helper, and which I more fully understand being a mother. There were just a few words, but they said everything. “Mother. She hath done what she could.”

As I think about Mother’s Day, and how we might honor the ones who loved us and nurtured us and helped us become who we are today, that pretty much says everything. For all their weaknesses (which most of us could easily list) for all their hovering (though now we know that worrying is part of loving), for all they couldn’t give us….it is their strength, and their protection and their concern which have mattered so much more. “She hath done what she could.” And, frankly, that was plenty. So let us be about thanking God for those women who loved us and empowered us, who softened us and strengthened us, who chided us and supported us, and who, above all, gave us life.

 All of my life I have watched you
climbing mountains, chasing dreams
All of my life you gave me everything
but you don't have to give the world to me

Just say you love me as I am,
say you want me as I am,
say I'm someone in your eyes,
that's all I want it to be
Oh, just let me go, I know one day if I'm allowed,
if I'm allowed, one day I'll make you proud  (Steve Max/Wayne Hector/Andy Hill, Blackstone Music Ltd. )

She writes “This is about conflict between a parent and his son.  The dilemmas most youngsters find themselves up against.”  (“I Dreamed a Dream,, 2009 Simco Limited)  And I might add it is the dilemma of most parents too.  Our children sing  “Oh, just let me go, I know one day if I’m allowed, if I’m allowed, one day I’ll make you proud.”  They want to fly away.  We want to keep them in our nests.   And yet we want them to “make us proud.”

For years I heard that happen every time a father spoke to one of his three sons.  No matter what the problem, no matter what the dilemma, the conversations ended with the same words.  It didn’t matter if there was a bad grade or a great game, whether there was a speeding ticket or a new job.    I might  hear words of frustration and words of encouragement.  I heard chiding and congratulations.   There was often advice, sometimes given gently, sometimes strongly.  But the conversations always ended the same words.  “I’m proud of you, kid.” 

And I watched the effect of those words.  I saw three boys become three men.  I saw them stand taller and with more confidence.  And though there were still tough times, and sometimes even bad decisions, they never doubted that they had the strength to right the wrong, to move on.  And if ever they faltered they could always hear that voice assuring them “I’m proud of you, kid.”

But sometimes, I confess and the rest of you know, sometimes I hold on a little too tight to that “I’ll make you proud.”  I relish the good grade or the great game or the new job.  I strut a little, and brag a little and am more than a little proud that my son has done whatever.   And then I realized, listening to Susan Boyle, that I am making the proud part more about me, than my child.   I realized that when all is said and done, the moments I cherish are not the game winning home run, or getting a great job.  Rather, it is those moments when an unexpected text arrives telling me he loves me.  It is being assured that with all that encouragement from his father, he is capable of making good decisions.  It is those times when he is honest to a fault, when he stands up for things I might not believe in…

So perhaps, when all is said and done, we should not be proud of our children’s accomplishments, but humbled by their goodness.   For as Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " I guess we can’t ask for more than that!

It wasn’t Ruby Red Slippers that began my journey back from the sorrow of my husband’s death and that valley of shadows.   Nope.  I didn’t just tap my red slippers together and end up home in Kansas.

But a week ago I did find something to wear that brought me home to a world that once again seemed as if there might be some light and promise ahead.

I was going to visit my friends near San Francisco.  And frankly my workout clothes are old and totally out of style.  It seemed like a good time to replace them.  So I bought some exercise stretchy pants things and a jacket and stuck them in my suitcase, knowing they weren’t the brand that everybody was recommending.  Who would spend that much on something to wear to the gym, I asked myself?

But once I got with my friend and told her about my clothes and the ones I didn’t buy her eyes widened.  “OMG” she said.  “They have a store right in town.  And believe me, they last forever and you will never wear anything more comfortable.” I snorted a little out loud, but was silently counting the exits til we got there.

So I found my size in the long kind.  And I found my size in the cropped kind.  And I tried them on.  And suddenly, I started to move.  I started to smile.  I danced around the dressing room feeling good, and in shape and ready to rock and roll.   I started planning which exercise class I might add to my schedule.  I imagined myself working out and making friends and feeling even better.  And so, despite the cost I bought them.  Both kinds.  And a jacket on sale. 

And I am a different woman, sort of.  I smile a little more.  When I go to the gym I move really well in my pants and I imagine that the people there  are nodding their heads knowing that just this once, for a little while, Beth is cool. 

So you see,  I came home from my short vacation both calmed and energized, my soul invigorated and my heart healing.

Truth to tell, I am sure that much of what happened was because I was staying with friends who know me and love me and welcomed me just as I was.  I am sure it isn’t a coincidence that we went to someone’s birthday party and learned how to curl and for a few hours all I thought about was whether once I got down to move the stone or sweep the stone whether I would ever be able to get up again.  It was almost fated that we watched my friend’s tennis partner on a new public television program up there.  Called “Reinventing Yourself” the show is  about people who have come to critical moments in their lives and have found new ways of expressing themselves.  Her friend became, as it happened, an Episcopal priest.

And by the way?  All of this happened just after Easter when we celebrate Jesus emerging from death to life again. A coincidence?  I doubt it.  Because, after all,there is new life in Christ.

 Praise be to God!

I was a junior at Cornell College, in the midst of everything, trying to figure out who I was, and who I should be and who I wanted to be.  It was Holy Week and there were certainly shadows in my life, though I can’t quite remember which particular heartbreaks and headaches cast them.  And then, to complicate my crisis, our American Literature professor gave us an assignment.  Off the syllabus he admitted, but important.  He wanted us to write an essay on any  one of Henry David Thoreau’s writings.   Students were  writing well researched papers about politics and civil disobedience.  They were academically analyzing who influenced Thoreau and who Thoreau influenced.    Not me.  Nothing scholarly from me.   Nope. I wrote about myself.  I couldn’t get beyond myself.  And the title of my essay was ‘Why I am not at Walden Pond.”

Looking back I know exactly why I wasn’t at Walden Pond.  First of all, I was in Iowa.  Secondly, there is no way I could survive in a little cabin in the woods that had no heating or plumbing and which required skills unknown to a city girl who had never been camping but loved to go shopping.  And given my persona then (and, in all honesty, still), being the only one to talk to with no one else to listen would have immediately driven me back to town. 

But in those days it wasn’t so clear to me.  We were supposed to being going back to the garden.  We were supposed to be introspective and reflective.  We were supposed to be able to quietly commune with nature and with our inner selves and somehow gain the insight to storm into the world to change the world. 

So I wrote at some length about all the things within me that kept me captive.  I ended my paper with the last lines of Thoreau’s book, hoping that his poetic writing might mask my own self confessed confusion.  I turned it in sheepishly, knowing that something was usually better than nothing but maybe not so this time.  I was surprised and terrified when Mr. Martin had them ready at our next class.  “I don’t want to have to grade papers over Easter weekend” he claimed.

I looked at the front of mine.  In red ink there was a “A,” with a slight qualification.  ‘It is hard to grade something as personal as this.  But you are very honest.”   I was relieved.  I paged through the paper quickly to check for any other comments.  On the last page he had circled the lines I had quoted from On Walden Pond:  

 The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.  Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.  (On Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau)

And he wrote the words which have been the light in my shadows ever since.  He wrote the words that have been my Easter in even my darkest days.   In red ink he wrote the words which turned me inside out and right side up:
“Many happy morning stars.”

“Many happy morning stars.”    Then I was amazed that  Professor Martin would care enough about me to write those words.  Now I am amazed at how far a few heartfelt words can go to touch a life and change a soul, and how long those words can last.

So I would say the same to each of you and all of you, in the midst of your own darkness, in the center of your suffering, in the wee shadows that threaten to dim the light of your life,  in this Easter season of great hope and new life I would say to each of you and all of you,

“Many happy morning stars.”

The movie producers solved the controversy by releasing it without a rating, which I guess is something they can do.  I don’t pretend to understand what the rules and requirements are.  I do know that it is important that whether or not young people see the movie, they need to understand that being a bully has consequences the bully might not want to bear, and being bullied has emotional scars that last a long time.  The message is simple and clear.  “Don’t Bully.”  Further, if you are bullied, tell someone.  Find help.  You do not deserve to be hurt and humiliated.

Thankfully our world is waking up to all of these realities.  We see the fallout over and over again.  We are even beginning to understand the forms that adult bullying takes, as subtle as it might be.  And we are learning how to stand against such bad behavior.

 But I am also realizing we are not going far enough.  And it came to me as I watched the incredible “youtube”  video of Jonathan Antoine’s performance on “Britain’s Got Talent.”   When he and his friend Charlotte walked on stage to begin their song, the judges looked wary.  Simon’s face was more than a little skeptical.  The shots of the audience showed disbelief mixed with displeasure.

You see Jonathan is a big, really big 17 year old with shoulder length hair.  He is the kid on the playground who would be the first target of cruel taunts.  He would be the last one picked for the team. He is the one kids would see and walk away from just to avoid an encounter.  On the video he talks about what it has been like for him:  “I’ve always had problems with my size since I could remember,” he said. “It kind of damaged my confidence, quite a bit. When people would say something to me, it would take a little piece out of me.”  But it was his friend Charlotte Jaconelli who began to change things for him.  In the interview taped before the show he added “I really don’t think I’d be going up on stage today if I didn’t have Charlotte by my side.”

Then they began to sing.  Suddenly everything changed.  Because Jonathan’s voice is unbelievable, wonderful, heavenly, strong, beautiful, heart wrenching.   Instantly the crowd stood up.  The judges were aghast in the glory of the sound.  When the two finished everyone cheered as tears rolled down their cheeks.  And all the judges gave them a “yes” vote. 

 Nobody will bully Jonathan anymore, because he has transformed the vision others have of him.  But nobody should have bullied Jonathan before they knew of his gift.  Nobody should ever have made fun of him because of his size.

 And somebody should have opened their minds so that they could open their hearts. Somebody should have walked up to the lonely kid on the playground and asked if he wanted to play catch.  Somebody should have been brave enough and bold enough to ask if maybe that Jonathan wanted to be their friend.

Because not bullying is not enough.  Just not saying mean words is not enough.  That is certainly the beginning.  But there is only a good ending when the next step is taken, when children and grown ups are big enough and kind enough to see behind whatever it is that makes one person vulnerable to teases and taunts and tears.  Though bullies can ruin lives, friends can save lives.

We might remember the words of the one who gave his life to save us from the cruelty of others, the one who endured such pain and suffering only so that we might live the love of the God who send a man named Jesus to walk in our midst. 

For that Son is our Savior.  He is the one who said, “Come to me all  who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart,  and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:38-30)

The reaction was swift and strong. In Afghanistan the villagers were paralyzed by the tragedy.  The Afghan government called for immediate justice.  The Taliban threatened reprisal. 

In our own country:  Army officials pored over  Bales’ records trying to find some reason for such an awful, seemingly random attack. Psychologists are speculating about what might have “snapped.”  His personal life and his military career are under intense scrutiny.  And trying to understand what happened will be critical in preventing the same thing from happening again, if anyone can truly understand why it happened.  On another level Government officials worried with good cause about how this would affect our efforts in Afghanistan.   There might be repercussions.  Trust crumbled.  Efforts at peaceful engagement seem threatened.

The search for explanation and implication will continue.  The demands for justice and retribution will continue.

But I am leaving all that for the others.  I know that understanding Staff Sgt. Bales  matters.  I know that weighing the effect on our relationship with the country and our continued presence in Afghanistan matters.  I know that justice must be served.  But I am leaving all that for the others.

I am staying with the horror of the moment.  I am staying with the villagers who lost mother, father, sister, brother, child.  I am weeping with the ones whose lives were suddenly ripped apart by a madman with a gun.  I am not thinking about the shooter’s past or our nation’s future.  This is one time when I do not want to see the big picture.  I want to see the little picture.  I want all of us to see the little picture, the little picture which is so big in the lives of those who died, and their families and their village.  

I want to weep, I want all of us to weep, because I am sure God is weeping too. 

Her name is Siri and an awful lot of people have come to know her and, in fact, depend on her.  She speaks with authority, as she answers just about any question put to her.  And truth to tell, nobody I know at least has any idea what she looks like, wouldn’t recognize her if they ran in to her on the street.  (Although there is the young woman who waited on us at a restaurant recently, one of those places where the waiters and waitresses write their names upside down so they can be read by diners who are totally impressed by this skill.  This girl, however, hadn’t quite mastered that art, and didn’t speak particularly clearly but as she walked away and we looked at her scribble it might have said “Siri.” So the woman on the other side of the flat Iphone might be closer than we think).

Whoever she is and whatever she looks like, I have to say that I am in awe of her.  Or, more truthfully, I am in awe of the technology which created her.   How she can recognize voices and words, how she can quickly find answers to totally random questions, how she can know how to find the closest pizza and how to get me home and who won the Oscar for the best picture is truly a mystery in my universe if no one else’s.

Though I had known about her a while, I actually met her for the first time on Super Bowl Sunday.  There were 9 of us together that afternoon, all but two of us of a “certain age,” i.e.  old enough to remember the very first Super Bowl.  But we couldn’t remember when and where it was, who played and who won.  We talked and debated for a long time between commercials and didn’t agree. Finally we couldn’t stand it any longer.  Bill and Barbara pulled out their new toys and asked the woman who will be my new friend.  Siri, that is. I wasn’t convinced that anyone with that kind of voice would know anything about football but sure enough.  “When was the first superbowl and who won?”  “1967” she replied, “and the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs.”  I chortled proudly, while my friends protested that the name “Super Bowl” came two years later when the Jets and the Colts played.

As I remember that evening, though, what I realize is that it was more fun wondering than  finding out, more fun sharing our stories about  where we were and what we were doing than it was having the answer to our question.  There was more  beauty  in the conversation and the connecting than in knowing that my Packers were the first champions.

Which unexpectedly enough might actually have something to do with praying.  Because at least for me, the power of prayer is as much my talking to God as it is getting an answer.   The power of prayer is as much keeping my relationship close as it is in making sure that all my needs (and I’ll be honest, my demands) are met.  The power of prayer is in my willingness to talk things through with God, think things through with God, and finally turn things over to God.  The power of prayer is that no matter what I say or when I say it, I know that someone is listening, and caring.    

To which all I can say is “Amen!”

It begins with one of my weaknesses-- I admit I am a sucker for anything free.  I love shopping Costco if only because their free samples are so…free.  Trader Joe’s has delicious and healthier tastes every day that are…free.   In the olden days when they passed out cigarettes on street corners I made sure to get some though I didn’t smoke.  I am a sucker for anything free.

So the invitation to join a kind of club at my grocery store (what you so cal natives call your "market") and get a dozen free eggs and some very impressive bargains was a no brainer.  All I had to do was go on line, set up a user name and password (which I wrote down somewhere but I don’t know where) and automatically be eligible for very special deals.  They would be listed every week.  I just needed to remember to check the list and make sure I shopped for what was on sale.  No coupon clipping.  Just enter my club number and everything would happen like, well magic.

I was surprised, then, to get a message from my club.  I hadn’t expected personal communication.  I opened it quickly hoping that I was eligible for something else…free.  Instead there was a notice that the canned food my poodles Rookie and Blue like best was on sale --10 22 oz. cans for a dollar.  Wow!  Amazing deal.  And my gala apples were on sale for .$99 a pound.  Whew!  Couldn’t beat those prices. 

Then I paused for a moment.  It felt just a little bit creepy that this machine knew so much about me.  That every time I buy something at the store, a little creature is writing it down and saving it up in a file that is all about me.  I blushed for a moment, hoping they weren’t too upset the other day when I bought three bags of chocolate chips, a bag of valentine jelly beans and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s  “Americone Dream” ice cream.  Or if they did notice, I trusted that they also noticed that my cart more often has lots of romaine lettuce and fresh fruit.

“They know all about me,” I fussed.  And then after another, somewhat longer pause, I relaxed.  I even smiled.

They know all about me, I thought, but they really don’t know me.   They don’t know that the canned dog food is what gets my furry friends to eat their dinner more quickly so that we can take a walk before it is time to make my dinner.  They don’t know how I laugh watching them steal each other’s food when they each have exactly the same thing.

And those apples?  Not just apples.  That’s what I eat every noon with my ¼ cup of dry roasted peanuts.  When I am home I sit on the patio loving the sun, reading a book and taking a few minutes away from everything else I should be doing or thinking or worrying.  Those apples are more than round red things in a bag.  They feed my body, and they feed my soul.

So even if someone were to find  out everything about me, and get my social security number and my bank account number and all my pin numbers, if someone were to sit down at my computer and figure out my password in a second, if they were to know all about me, they still wouldn’t know me.

There might be identity theft, but no one can steal my identity or your identity.  Nobody can take what makes us who we are, from our God given gifts, to our God forbid quirks, to the things that make us laugh and the things that make us cry.  Because the only One who matters knows us best of all, and loves us anyway. 

For God is good... all the time!

I will miss the fancy sentimental card I always got, the one I would have thought was corny if it hadn't been given to me by someone who loved me.  I will miss wondering if there will be flowers delivered to the office, or a box of dark chocolates at my place at dinner.  I will miss all of that, but I will smile knowing that our three boys will all remember the young women they love and they too will be showered with pink and red hearted love themselves.  I will hear Lynn Seibel singing the song from "The King and I" that he sang at Paul’s memorial service, and I will smile:  .

Don't cry young lovers, whatever you do,
Don't cry because I'm alone;
All of my memories are happy tonight,
I've had a love of my own.
I've had a love of my own, like yours-
I've had a love of my own.

But what startles me is the person, besides Paul,  who keeps joining me when I think about the holiday.  It isn’t Cupid.  It isn’t the boy named Doug in my fourth grade class who gave me a store bought card instead of a valentine out of a classroom box.  It isn’t Bob in 7^th grade.  It isn’t even all the boys who would never have dreamed of giving me a valentine though I dreamt of them all of the time.

One of my Valentines this year is going to be  Margaret Thatcher.  Really.  Margaret Thatcher, as least as she is portrayed by Meryl Streep in the movie “Iron Lady.”   Margaret in the movie is slightly befuddled and often confused.  She can’t always grasp that her husband is gone, having died some years before.  She sees him often and talks to him frequently and hasn’t been able to go through his things as much as her family wishes she would.   But the moment I share with Margaret is in a moment of sudden clarity.  She has gotten up in the middle of the night and she starts madly packing then stopping just a minute to rest.  Sitting in the middle of a pile of trash bags she wistfully asks Dennis’ memory…

“Were you happy?”  After all the years they shared, all they gotten through, all he had to tolerate because of her time as politician and prime minister, after all the years they had lived and loved… she wondered “were you happy?”  And as I see that scene my heart cringes and my eyes moisten because sometimes I ask the same thing…

We don’t know what Dennis would have said.  But I am confident that that if we were to look our Valentines straight in their eyes, our husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and friends, if we were to look our Valentines straight in the eyes and simply say, “No matter what, from now to forever, I love you very much.,” their answer to Margaret’s question would be ‘Yes.”

For as the Bible says, “Love never ends….faith hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

But the problem goes beyond that campus, and beyond the 91711 zip code and even beyond academia in its broadest sense.  For the effort to get a higher ranking seems to be a symptom of a culture that just can’t get beyond needing to always be #1, or at least ahead of as many people as possible.

And I have to say I get it.  I get it really well because I am competitive to a fault, and sometimes a big fault.  I always wanted to be the best.  I didn’t cheat to get there, but I certainly didn’t behave myself when I didn’t.  I was furious, and red faced and pouty when Miss Summers said Susan had the best penmanship in our fourth grade class. (that’s when we actually learned how to write cursively).  Sixth grade may have been my greatest year:  just because I couldn’t stand the idea of those twins winning the 50 yard dash I ran faster than ever before or ever since to be the speediest girl runner in the grade, and was darn close to Gordon who won the boys’ race.  Our teacher gave out stars for everything and so I sat straighter (posture star), read more (book star), had a bigger vocabulary (word star) than anyone else and managed a certain (and I am sure annoying) smugness for most of that school year.

I get wanting to be number 1.  I also get what it feels like to be number 2, having lost more sermon competitions than probably any other minister in our National Association (I have since stopped entering).   And watching my son begin to get responses to his law school applications, and hearing him tell me exactly what the ranking of any school is and where he hopes to go, I  realize that he has inherited some of that competitiveness.  Not necessarily a good thing

Because truth to tell, in the end, and in the final analysis, it probably doesn’t matter whether you edge out number 10 to become number nine, or whether you have the second best penmanship or even the second worst penmanship.  The other side of the story is the side we often forget.  As often as not  the one who was first in his law school class at the number one school who entered the very best firm and now makes the most money of any new graduate, works 24/7, doesn’t have time to spend his money and hates his job.

Better to be like the rest of us, whether we are content or not:  pursuing something we are passionate about, or doing something that lets us pursue something we are passionate about.  Because for that “rest of us”, which is actually the most of us, what we do makes a difference. Nothing could matter more than  helping a 2^nd grader read a story,  sharing a sandwich with the homeless man who camps on the church steps, reading a poem that makes us weep, seeing a picture that makes us gasp, hearing a song that touches our soul or holding the hand of a friend whose heart is breaking.

For after all, some One we love, who loves us no matter what, has said  that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.   And all God’s people said “Amen!”