Birmingham Airport, 5:00 a.m.

Waiting to board an impossibly early flight. Running low on caffeine and humanity.

Also in the waiting room, a family of 5, grandparents, adult daughter and 2 little girls I would place at ages 6 and 4, give or take. Much is being made of the fact that it is the girls first flight. They are unimpressed and are busying themselves unpacking their entire carry-on bags seconds before boarding. They have been instructed not to do this, but it has provided a nice break from pushing each other and shrieking. They are crabby and ungrateful, uncooperative and difficult, in other words, expressing outwardly my exact internal emotional state.

We board the plane at a glacial pace in which entire kingdoms could rise and fall, and when I take my seat, my heart sinks. The crabby twins are directly in front of me. It will be a very long short flight to Atlanta. I content myself with the thought that at least we are not flying to Australia.

Immediately a scuffle breaks out between them over who gets the window seat, the younger prevails. Howls ensue from the elder over the unfairness of it all. A flight attendant is accidentally summoned because one of them pushed the button they were expressly instructed to not push. They refuse to smile for Grandma’s “first flight” shot for Instagram, despite several attempts. This degenerates into low level sniveling as we taxi down the runway.

As we take off I eventually notice it has gone quiet. Through the gap in our seats by the window, I see the little girl is staring wide-eyed out the window. Suddenly she announces in a clear, ringing tone:

“ We are FLYING!”

There is no mistaking the wonder in her voice.

I look out the window and it comes to me that we ARE flying, and what a miracle that truly is. I forget that I’m tired and grumpy and old and crunched up in a tiny seat and remember that I have the privilege of soaring above the world.

Then she exclaims

“Clouds, clouds, CLOUDS…”

before her words trail off.

And I looked out as we came up out of the mist onto a snowy blanket of clouds, illuminated by the rising Sun, a ring of fire around the horizon, and I catch my breath at the beauty of the world.

At that moment she looked back through the gap at me and our eyes met and we smiled, and without saying a word, turned our eyes back to marvel at clouds, clouds, clouds…

“…to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning.”-Isaiah 61:3

Christmas Eve, 2024.

On a beautiful Christmas Eve morning I woke up feeling sad. No real reason. Of course I could find some, the empty places at the table, more ever year, the general overwhelming clamor that is the holidays, the vague sense of anti-climax about it all; but that would just be playing pin the tale on the emotion. So just vaguely sad.

As I sat looking out the dining room window at the birds, my mind reached back to a holiday party I had been to that week. I was my husband’s plus one for a group he is a part of, and we made the rounds being introduced and chatting. My husband moved away to talk to someone, and I introduced myself to a woman standing near by. One minute we were engaging in polite small talk, and the next, having an incredibly deep and authentic conversation about the loss of her daughter 5 years ago. A beautiful young woman killed a particularly senseless way, that ended life as it had been known for her and many others as well. It was as though everything and everyone else fell away as she described what it had been like to live with the eternal raw wound of the lost child. She told me how in her anguish, she began to paint and to write and how art began to heal her, as much as she can ever be healed, and beauty and life began to be possible again. One moment small talk, then suddenly something else altogether, the Unseen Hand took over and a real connection happened. I walked away baffled, but honored. I sensed it meant something, had happened for a reason, but for what reason I could not say.

And so, in that moment on Christmas Eve, that encounter came back to me. I thought of her, her family, several families having a much worse day than me, with a real reason for sadness. I began to pray for them. That THEY would know peace, that THEY would feel joy again, that THEY would be comforted. That I would get over myself…immediately. Amen.

In the stillness that followed, I looked out and saw a red-winged blackbird…then another, and another. They came, first five, then ten, twenty, fifty. I looked out the back door and realized that the woods were alive with them, hundreds of them, every branch full. Occasionally something would spook them and they’d all take off as one, and then settle back down, a seething, ebony carpet on my still green grass. Finally, responding to some unheard signal, as one, they took to the wing for parts unknown, lifting my heart with it, in a cacophony of midnight wings, and flashes of scarlet, against the bright, blue, winter sky.

“Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?”-Jane Austen

The phone rang at my Grandmother’s house on December 23, 1978. I answered it, and it was my Father calling to tell me that after 11 long years as an only child, I was a sister…I had a sister.

When I finally got to see her, she was tiny, just a bump over 5 pounds. And she has stayed tiny. When my boys, and later other nieces and nephews, and now her own children, outgrew her they would shout:

“We’re taller than you Aunt Maggie!”

And she would reply:

“Aim higher boys, aim higher!”

She had a head full of dark hair that promptly fell out, and stayed out for a long time, necessitating a long season of bows being taped to her head. And when it came back in, it was blond and has stayed that way.

It was as though Santa had delivered me my very own personal baby doll. I learned how to take care of babies, and how not to, by taking care of her, like student teaching for being a parent. I always suspected that what I felt for her was pretty close to what I would feel for a child, as it turned out to be.

Then she became a child that followed me around and wanted my attention and got in my stuff. One night in high school I was sitting on the couch with a boyfriend holding hands, and I looked over to see her on the other side, holding his other hand. There was a brief, tumultuous time when we shared a room, a tiny room. Many harsh words were spoken, many tears shed. We never speak of it.

Then she became a teenager, and I became sounding board, keeper of the secrets, letting her tell me things that I sometimes didn’t want to hear, so she would have an adult to talk to.

Then a college student, then a young woman, then a Bride, and now a Mother. I cried for the entire hour it took us to drive home from her wedding and I couldn’t have told you why. I have never felt so many competing emotions, until I had my own children.

I have been child care consultant, chief celebrater, commiserator, coffee dater, and somewhere along the way it became mutual, and we have arrived at friends, the best of friends. She’s the first person I tell news, good or bad, and these days she talks me down off the ledge as often as I do her. There is a way of talking, of crying, of laughing, and a shorthand to our relationship that I have with no one else. She insists that we must die at the exact same moment holding hands, as the only acceptable option. I am hoping she can arrange that.

And sometime today I will tell her, and mean from my heart, as I do every year:

“Happy Birthday to the best Christmas present I ever got.”

I read a story the other day. In it a man shared about buying some land, much overgrown from years of neglect. He was in his field clearing brush and found beneath it, the remnants of a long forgotten barbed wire fence. And there an acorn had fallen and a tiny oak sapling has risen, or tried to. It was spindly from lack of light and had become embedded and bent in the barbed wire as it grew. He carefully cut the wire away and replanted it in another place, with better soil, better light and more room, and now time will tell if it becomes a mighty oak.

What struck me upon reading was the resilience and insistence of life. The poor conditions had not been able to stop that force, but had caused it to grow into something that was not quite what it was meant to be, and yet it grew.

That is not so different from our lives, and how conditions beyond our control can alter us so that we are not quite what we are meant to be. Dry and withered from lack of water, or yellow and rotting from too much, weak and spindly from always having to stretch to reach the light, or forever marked by the barbs that have become a part of us. And yet, we grow.

I thought of all the people I see in a day, including the one in the mirror, overcoming all manner of adverse conditions that are known only to them. And it reminded me to be merciful. Because we are all doing the very best we can to do the very best we can, from the little sapling that could, to me and you. Warped, but resilient, and hopefully, still recognizable as what we were meant to be.

Cowboy Santa is the first ornament out of the box this year, the first gift ever given me by a patient, many Christmases ago. There was a different one for each of us in the clinic, Santas in various occupations. Given to me by a young patient who holds the unlucky honor of having the worst veins I ever had to contend with, and the patience of a Saint as we stuck him over and over, making him miserable as we tried in vain to make him well.

Cowboy Santa is always a reminder of him and all the patients, and the things they have given me.

A baby outfit smocked with trains for my first child.

A Christmas Cactus that in an act of yearly rebellion, blooms at Thanksgiving.

An enamel box in the shape of a Christmas Stocking. It came with a note of thanks and appreciation, one for each by name, from a man who could measure his time left on earth in days.

A recipe for Salsa from Big Dave, in his own handwriting, and another for Miss Edna’s tea cakes, in shaky cursive like they used to teach.

And food, oh the food. They press cakes and cookies and homemade candy into our hands as though love and gratitude could only be properly conveyed through butter and sugar.

A tray at Christmas from the Mother of a patient who thankfully was healed years ago, and has gone on to live a wonderful life. She turned up with one faithfully every year until she died. I eventually became a Mother that understood that impulse.

The look over the head of a woman from her husband as we admitted her for what would be the last time. His lips saying “Thank you” with his eyes saying all the things those two words could not.

The knowledge that there may be less time than you think and not to squander it.

The understanding that in the end, no matter who you are, it all goes back in the box.

That peace can come and be overwhelming when there is no reason for it. That the veil is very thin around the dying, and they are not alone when they leave us.

That in the end, all you leave and all you take away is who you loved and how you loved them, and who loved you.

That is the best gift they have given me.

Long ago I formed the habit of giving the first hour of the day to God. My Dining Room becomes a Holy Place in those moments. I read, pray, meditate, try to make contact with the Source before I go out into my day. Sometimes I feel more connected than others, but I am faithful to be present, and God is faithful to be present too.

Through the window I see green, the trees, the birds at the feeders or in the birdbath, beginning their day too. The feeder, a gift a gift from my stepfather, sturdy and impervious to squirrels, faded by time but as good as ever. The birdbath, a Mother’s day gift from my husband.

In the window, a stained glass panel given to me by my Mother, the first light peeking through it.

In the corner the Monsterra plant, a gift from my son, once an uncertain chute, now in glorious fullness.

In the Hutch, my wedding dishes, reminders of well wishes from family and friends long gone now. A soup tureen that is all that is left of my Grandmother’s China. I never use it, but I like to know that it’s there.

On the wall, the prints we splurged on when bought our first house, when we had nothing and yet everything.

And on the table where I fed my family for years, dented and scratched by many little hands, sit my Bible, my notebook, my pen, my coffee cup. An unlikely altar. A Holy place.

Here is where I start again. Here is where I decide anew how this day will be, whose this day will be. It is peaceful and quiet, my favorite hour of the day. I sit expectantly in the stillness, surrounded by gifts, surrounded by reminders that I am loved.

“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul.”-Emily Dickinson

We went to Yad Vashem at the end of long day of Pilgrimage. We were running late and missed part of our slot. We rushed to our place in line trailing dust from Megiddo in our wake, where we had stood and surveyed that ancient site, where the last great battle will purportedly one day be. But on that day, just a lovely green valley, viewed from the top of the world, or so it seemed. We were left with just an hour to tour Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum. It was more than enough.

I drifted from room to room of the worst of mankind, the terror and dread and the poor people caught in it. Each room more terrible than the next. A testament to cruelty and hate. Until my heart felt as heavy as a stone.

I came out into the great Hall of Names, a large, round gallery room with an enormous atrium ceiling, completely covered in photographs. Baby pictures, school pictures, birthday parties, picnics, graduations, wedding pictures, pictures in the thousands of people, just people. I stood surrounded by the images of them, their smiling, hopeful faces with no idea the horrors that lay ahead, no way to warn them, nothing to be done, except remember.

I stumbled out into a gray afternoon, stunned and battered by the enormity of man’s inhumanity to man. And then I heard it. Somewhere to my left, a bird was singing, a beautiful song. It went on and on and I finally saw him up in the top of a small tree. A Eurasian Blackbird, singing his little heart out. He paused for a second to consider me, with an obsidian eye, and then resumed his full throated song. A song of life going on and hope in that very dark place.

And something so lovely and pure seen after such horror, began to restore my equilibrium. I turned to go and entered the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, a lovely garden where trees are planted and memorials placed for all the people that didn’t turn away and risked their lives to help. A testament to courage. I made my way out surrounded by the memory of those who were lost, those who were saved and those who helped.

Resilience(n.)-the ability to be happy or successful again after something difficult or bad has happened.

Spring came with all the shock and awe of the yearly resurrection. And into the corner of our carport came an Eastern Phoebe pair. They carefully made a snug little nest and filled it with eggs that became chicks. The chicks progressed, wearing out their exhausted parents, greedy little mouths always wide open. Over the days, they grew bigger until you could just make out the four little heads above the edge of the nest. And then disaster. We walked out one day and the whole nest and all the chicks were gone, most likely having fallen victim to a hawk or an owl or a snake. Only a forlorn bit of moss remained. One of the parents sat nearby on the power line nearby, silent.

We were crushed. In the days that followed, every time I walked out and saw the empty space I felt bereft. I know it’s the circle of life and all that, but they never had a chance, never got to fly even one time, never got to do what they were made to do. And their poor little parents that worked so hard. Well, it was just sad.

So, imagine my surprise as after a time they began to rebuild that nest, carefully re-layering twigs and lining with moss until they again had a beautiful little nest that they promptly filled with four more eggs. Eggs that hatched into pink, fuzzy, alien creatures with faces only a mother could love. These grew and became feathered and began to look like their parents and we were again treated to four little heads above the rim of the nest looking out at us. We held our breath.

Then it came to pass that they left the nest and sat out on the ledge, getting their courage up I suppose. One by one they fledged, hanging around in our azaleas until they left for parts unknown. Until there was only one. He sat there on the ledge for a full 24 hours, and as I had heard Barred Owls in the trees, I encouraged him to hurry up and fly away. I came around the corner the next morning just in time to watch him leave the ledge and take to the sky. He did not look back.

I still see them, or their parents, in our yard from time to time, and it makes me smile, and remember that there is a lesson for me too. It’s a tough world, and life can be brutal and without mercy sometimes, but beautiful and miraculous. And there is also beauty in finding the courage and resilience to start again.

“It’s an old song, but we’re going to sing it again.”-Hadestown

Photo Credit: Jackie Hudgins

A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to see the Northern Lights, a rarity in these here parts. My husband and I, loaded up and went into the deep dark woods to escape the light pollution, in anticipation. From his work he knows every road in our county and drove us deep into the country, down a road named for a man long gone, a farmer, a powerful mover and shaker in the county, who was perhaps most well known for his propensity for wearing dresses. I can’t emphasize enough how unusual that would’ve been at that time in this part of the world. This was long before Billy Porter or Harry Styles were even thought of, and the mind boggles. But he was known to be a major political player, a king maker and breaker, so no one said a word when they saw him out on his tractor with his skirts billowing out behind him. I’d like to have seen that.

(But, I digress. Seriously. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.)

So we drove miles down this deserted, pitch black road. After a while we saw another car pulled over. I said “Maybe they’re looking for the Northern Lights too…or dumping a body.”

But even though it was clear and dark, what we did not see was one tiny sign of an Aurora Borealis. We stood beside the car, in the spring night for a long time. It was perfectly still and perfectly dark. Slowly, I began to notice the stars, like a handful of diamonds thrown on the black velvet sky, the fireflies, the frogs, the crickets. And then another sound rose in the dark:

“Chuck-Will’s Widow, Chuck-Will’s Widow.”

Joined by another, and then by another and another until all around us a chorus of song from a most elusive bird, the aptly named Chuck Will’s Widow, cousin to the Whippoorwill. Seldom heard in the city and almost never seen anywhere at all, they rule the night in the country, the darkened meadows their kingdom. I’d never seen or even heard one, and here we were surrounded by them. We stood transfixed, not by the miracle of the Northern Lights, but by the miracle of everyday world at night. And so it was that I came in search of one thing and found something else entirely. Something I had not even known I’d wanted, a transcendent moment in a lovely place with my favorite person under the night sky. A different kind of light illuminating the dark with wonder and love.

Chuck Will’s Widow

Absent (adj.)-not present, missing.

At 8:00 on Wednesday morning I was doing all of the following:

1. Listening to a podcast.

2. Running an errand.

3. Being late for work.

4. Mentally managing future events that may, or may not, actually happen.

5. Operating a moving vehicle.

What I was not doing, giving my full attention to anything, being present in the moment, being present in my life.

I pulled up at the Post Office, grabbed my package and lurched toward the door. And then as I reached for the door I saw it. A tiny little moth nestled between the frame and the glass, bright pink and yellow, its body velvety looking, covered in tiny feathers, bright pink antennae on its head. It was perfectly still. I stopped in my tracks and beheld this creature so marvelous that it could only have sprung from a Divine mind, both creative and playful. I came in hot on two wheels right into the moment just in time for a brush with the “completely other” in the words of Karl Barth. For a moment I was exactly where my feet were and beheld a tiny wonder. I walked away smiling.

And I almost missed it. And I wonder about all the other moments my life I have missed, the “God winks” I have missed because I am “forever elsewhere”. In the past, in the future, but in the present moment, absent.

This isn’t the part where I share the great revelation I had so that this will never happen again. This is the part where I realize that I don’t even remember what I was listening to, or what future event I was worried about, much less whether it actually happened. That the errand got run, that I made it to work eventually, and that I should really try to pay attention when I’m driving a car. And that I will only get so many days, so many moments, so many marvels. I don’t want to ever miss another chance to be blown away by wonder, or even just the sweetness of the everyday. I just want to remember to be present, so if God shows up I’m paying attention.