Living Legacy

Fitzroy Square. Cream buildings, a veritable heritage.

Leaves swirling, greyly autumn.

Blue plaques on walls to mark the homes of famous men and women.

I look and read and try to imagine this or that person living in this space, looking out of that window, watching these trees shed their leaves. A blue plaque as living legacy, reminder of who they were, what they did, the length of their stay.

And I think of my legacy. What will I leave? Who would want to remember me?

My children, offspring from our marriage, carried in my heart and on my hip for so  long, and now carried simply in my heart -  as they carry their own on hip and in heart.

They will remember.  But what will they remember; and their children, my  grandchildren, and perhaps their children too.  What will they remember of me? What  will they remember me for?

And the only thing I want for my legacy is that it should be my prayers for them.  Prayers reaching down through the generations, unto the third and fourth generation. To pray for my children, for their children and their children’s children.  For them and their spouses and their children’s children to be those who love the Lord, who live for  Him and give their all for Him.

I think of my legacy; and think, hope, pray, that it’s not too late, that there is time for the prayer to continue and to reach forward into the future, their future.

So I slow down, walking more slowly, taking time to look at the blue plaques, praying for those precious descendants. And I want more time; time to pray. I want time to slow and allow me moments more in prayer, moments to talk to my offspring, to tell them what’s really important to me. To whisper His story to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, tell them of the Lord’s great love for them and of mine too, a shadow of His.

My footsteps carry me on and Fitzroy Square is behind.  I quicken, conscious of dawdling, hurrying once again to the time-busyness of busy London around me. Yet deep inside I know: my legacy has time to deepen and develop.  I need not hurry on.  This one race is not the one I want to win – there’s no prize for being the first over the finishing line of life.

Instead, God grant me the time to pray it forward, tell it to my descendants, live it out the best I can for them.

“And I will pour out my Spirit on your descendants,
and my blessing on your children.
They will thrive like watered grass,
like willows on a riverbank.
 Some will proudly claim, ‘I belong to the Lord.’
 Others will say, ‘I am a descendant of Jacob.’
 Some will write the Lord’s name on their hands
 and will take the name of Israel as their own.”         ISAIAH 44:3-5 (NLT)

The Fosse Way

The Fosse Way. Ancient, straight, unbending.

Full of old memories.

Roman soldiers marched it. Horse carts stuck in its mud. Cars still drive most of it.  My friend and I walked some part of it today, heads tossed about in the wind, hairfree, carefree, glad to BE.

We walked.  We talked.

Glossy black cows and speckled herds were over the hedgerows.

We found blackberries sweet, small, sun-kissed.

There was a sadness in each of us, a year or more of hard places.   Parents departed. Children making nests empty. Struggling spouses. Illnesses. Finances. Life.

And the book I recently encountered.  Eucharistic moments – the breaking of bread, the giving of thanks in the brokenness, the miracle ensuing. Looking for charis, gifts of God, so often unnoticed yet there for our accepting.

We strode on, the ground dry and cracked, the path hard to our feet.

And then.

The farmyard, horses, a tractor from which to stand aside.  The gate to the next field, always open – always there a puddle thick with farmyard mud to straddle.

More dry earth, more fields, more cows.  More sun and wind and glorious freedom in the views. And then that final wet stretch, teetering along its edge, trying to find a pathway through, and I knowing it to be always wet, “Perhaps it’s a spring, fresh water always leaching through.”

Hop skip jump and we are over and onwards.

Remembering later, I write to her.

Thinking of that cracked dry soil we saw in some places this afternoon; and the puddles which never seem to be dry - a metaphor of what happens when joy and grace and God's gifts penetrate our broken, cracked lives.  

And looking for the Gifts.  Searching out the Eucharistic moment. Allowing Him to leach into our crackedness.  Dry hardness becomes soft.

Life giving.

Life healing.

Life refreshing.

Life in all its fullness.

His life filling into ours.

Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”  John 4:13.14

Tenth anniversary of 9/11

Try praying says the banner.

It blows in the wind which blows the people and the sounds and the smells of fast-food-side-stalls.

Try praying.

Prayer before anything else or there won’t be anything else.

So why did I not pray?

Why could I not pray?

9/11 and a daughter missing.

A phone call abruptly cut off as a Tower collapsed.

Her scream and the line going dead.

Hours of not knowing.

Manhattan had swallowed my daughter.

An eighteen year old daughter and her second day at work.

I could not pray.

I could worry.

I could cry.

I could cling to my family.

But I could not pray.

Words would not come.

Shock took over.

And then friends prayed.  Friends there, friends here.  Friends nearby and friends far away. Friends with comforting arms outstretched.

I felt cut off.  Longing to be back in England because America was closed down. Stranded. But not wanting to leave my daughter.

Wherever she was, however she was.

Try praying.

But sometimes prayer is impossible. Its words will not come. I am stranded – on a mat stranded, unable to help myself.  I need carrying friends, friends who will bring me to the feet of Jesus.

Ten years ago I could not pray.

A year ago I could not pray.

A daughter restored but a mother dead.

I need carrying friends. Praying friends. Friends who care.

And then -

I am a carrying friend

a praying friend

For you.  To Jesus.

Try praying.

For she who needs your prayer.

For he who cannot pray.

Have you tried?

Tried today?

Have I?

A New Thing

The End of Summer

And so it comes – the end of the idyll that was our summer.

A summer’s worth of weeks.

But now it’s time.

Time to return. Yet -

time for a new thing.

We felt it, American daughter and I.  Just a few days ago. The air is different, we said. It’s hotly glorious, sky clearly blue. But a change is coming. We know it. We can feel it. We can sense it.

It feels good and right and timely.  Welcome, even.

So we put away our shorts and strappy tops.  There was the ceremonial binning of much-worn well-loved worn-out summer sandals. The joy of rediscovering favorite shrugs and cosy sweaters and proper shoes.  The purchase of a new woolen skirt and dressy pumps to accompany it and exultation in that feeling of being well-dressed after a summer of short shorts, skimpy skirts and simple sandals.

It’s time. Time to grow up again. Time for routines and schedules and restoring order.

And yet. And yet there lingers a love of lazy summer days, of daisies, doing whatever whenever. However. It will return, we promise ourselves: next year, it will come again, but for now we are content, with our summer memories and still-golden tans, content to let the summer go, thankful for all we have done and all we have been and all we knew, for those eight long weeks.

I pull on long pants, slip a shrug over my shoulders – and drive with the roof down still, enjoying natural air conditioning after the hot, heavy, closeness of the humid summer air.

Anticipation. I almost long to sharpen my pencils ready for the new school term, to begin a fresh exercise book with its invitation and expectancy and openness and possibilities. To write my name on a new fly leaf and know I can begin afresh, in a new place with a new desk and new seat.

Time to return. Yet -

time for a new thing.

The promise is there.  I’m doing a new thing for you, says God.  Don’t you see it?

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18,19)

God says

CHANGE YOUR FOCUS:

STOP LOOKING BEHIND!

START LOOKING AHEAD!

Walter Brueggmann writes of this action of God:

“It is remarkable that Israel is told to forget the old exodus narrative in order to notice the new departure. The ‘new thing’ is not only more contemporary, but also more spectacular and exhibits the power of God in more effective ways. In these verses all the accent is upon the new experience which pushes the old memory aside. It may be worth noting that in the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, in so far as Christians are concerned, the same accent is upon the new at the expense of the old. Our God is doing a new thing.”

Our God is doing a new thing.

Because the past won’t sustain us.

God says, Forget the former things, I am doing a new thing.

The children of Israel had seen God have many victories in their past.  It had been a good past.

Leaving Egypt

Conquering the Land of Canaan

Fighting off prospective conquerors

Surviving a split in their country

But all their previous victories were doing nothing for them in the present. They needed a new work, a new miracle, a new victory.

So the question isn’t: what has God done?

There’s no doubt about that!

The question must be:

What new thing is God doing right now?

The children of Israel had a choice to make. They were in exile, looking back at former glories.  And looking back wasn’t helping. Yet all they could see in the present was problems, and their own powerlessness. They didn’t like where they were at the moment, and yet they didn’t seem to trust God to change things for them nor to want to be open to the possibilities He had in mind for them.

And so there is a choice:

They can continue as they are, nostalgic for what has been, yet not happy in the present, not trusting the Lord.

Or they can focus on what God wants to do in their lives. And God wants to do a new thing.

Can I see possibilities if God is in charge of this new thing?

The summer is the end of my year of mourning.  I am returning – to the memories, to the first anniversary of The Day, to the return of what must become normal-but-without-her.

Can I see possibilities if God is in charge of this new thing, this new life, this new beginning which is now beginning.  A chance to start over, sharpen the pencil, open the new page, take a new seat.

Claim the new thing HE is doing for me.  In me.  Through me.

Returning – to a new thing.  It’s in the air around us. Routines. Schedules.  School. It’s time.  Time to return to God and to the new thing He is doing.

O gracious God

Give us wisdom to perceive you

Diligence to seek you

Patience to wait for you

Eyes to behold you

A Heart to meditate upon you

And a life to proclaim you

Through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen,

The Last Day

There was so much to do. So much to decide. So much to clear and clean and tidy and sort. “You have a month from the date of her death,” the Church of England Pensions Board told us kindly – by letter, which took a week to arrive.  They owned her house. For she is – was – a clergy widow.

That left three.  Three weeks in which to do all that had to be done: a house-full of a life lived to the full. Photos and books and ornaments and presents; clothes and memories and cherished family heirlooms.

Her life. 

My inheritance.

I had been staying with her for a few days; we had had a happy mother and daughter time – one of the best ever.  The day before The Day, we made a trip to the seaside in the late summer sunshine.  Coffee on the Promenade.  Lunch in a sheltered courtyard.  Up to Beachy Head for the view.  I bought her an icecream to eat in the car while I briskly walked the headland, stretching my legs which ached with the slow walking of the morning, the sitting and the staying of old age.

She savoured it, made it last – and held the chocolate flake for my return, holding it out triumphantly.

“You eat this,” she twinkled. “I’ve saved it for YOU.”

She always did that.  Shared everything she had.

Saved the best and the last to give away.

Enjoyed the saving and the giving.

My I-phone recorded the photo: she is sitting at the driving seat of her car, window down, smiling gleefully as she holds the soft chocolate out to me, glad to give it me, insisting I eat it.

I took her arm as we walked across the gravel at the Birling Gap car park.  She didn’t want me to; wanted to be independent.  But she was glad to see the beach of pebbles, feel the late afternoon sun on her face. The I-phone quickly snapped her.

Tea in a garden in Alfriston.  Scones hot and fresh from the oven. Time to relax and talk and remember. Lashings of clotted cream and home made strawberry jam.  England at her best.

My mother at her best.

We didn’t know it was our last tea together.  Our last day together.  How could we know?

But it was a Gift. The Gift of a day together, unexpected because unlooked for. Surprisingly hot sunshine. Buying little presents for her great-grandchildren. “You don’t need to,” I said.  “They have so much.”

“Oh, but they will love this – and this – and this.” She was right. They did.

A Gift.  A whole day together without a cross word.  A cross word from me.  Always so impatient.  Always needing to move on, be somewhere else, thinking myself so important.

She never complained.  Always accepted, always grateful for any time I could ”spare” to be with her. Her only criticism: You do too much.  Slow down. You’re just like your father: a workaholic. Sit down.  Take the weight off your feet.

And so I did: for just this one day.  Slowed down enough to be with her. Do what she liked to do.

Our last evening – last because I had to catch a train the next morning. What did we do when we were back from our seaside outing? I don’t remember. But I remember checking the time of the train, not wanting to miss it, making sure she knew when to leave, when to get to the station in time. I could have stayed ….in the end I had to.

Our last morning.  Filling the car with gas. Going for a strengthening latte in the Deli.  Driving to the train station.

She was a good driver.  But fast.  We were there in plenty of time.  We sat and chatted, parked in the lay-by outside the station. Talked of the upcoming visit of the part of the family who live in the States. Her excitement at seeing them. We kissed goodbye.  She wanted a hug.  I gave it reluctantly; got out of the car; bent to retrieve my overnight bag from the back seat of her car.

And found myself lying awkwardly on the pavement behind me, flung back with the impact of the large black car.  Shoes flying. Back hurting. Surprised and shocked.  My mother getting out of the car, worried for me, concerned I was hurt.

People running to help.  Someone finding my shoes.  Arms lifting me up. Indignant voices condemning the car that had crashed into the back of my mother’s parked car.

The driver was another elderly lady.  Apologetic.  Finding insurance details.

And even then, even then, my mind wondering if I’d yet catch the train.  Wondering if the next one would be possible.  Weighing the times and the details.

Not noticing my pain – yet.

And then she was gone.

Swept away by the same car but then with a different driver.  Someone who had just arrived from London on the train, who had never driven that car  before.  Someone who could not stop, injuring the first driver and sweeping my mother away down the road.

* * * *

Three weeks.  Just three weeks to tidy up and clear out and be gone. Three weeks to look in every drawer, peer at old photos, divide up the inheritance.  Dispose of the unwanted, share out the longed for, fill in the forms, talk of the memories. Three weeks to stay on in her home.

I never wanted to leave again. She would have loved to have me there.

But by then she was gone.

A Twelve Month Journey Begins

September 23, 2011 A year ago, my mother died. Swept away, the one person who had known me, carried me, kept me close to her heart. The one who was always there for me, urging me on, supporting me in my crazy schemes; who nursed my children, prayed for them night and day, held their teenage confidences when I could not. The one who adored her great grandchildren and prayed for them too.  One moment she was there, a feisty ninety-year-young who cared ceaselessly for others, drove old ladies to church, talked non-stop on the phone to her friends and family whenever she could.

And the next she was gone.

Swept away by an out-of-control driver who could not, would not, stop.

And I stood there frozen, helpless, unbelieving; stunned from having been hit by the same car just a few minutes before.  Stunned now by what I was seeing; not understanding, not believing.

Deafened by the shouts and the screams of the passers-by.  Deafened by the sirens. Deafened by the silent scream inside.

Maybe I should have cried.

Maybe I too should have screamed.

But I kept it inside. And my tears turned to ice and my scream was frozen deep within.

At first, I thought of the hours and days she would have of convalescence; of how she would battle to walk again and fight for her independence. I looked at her face, ground into the road; at the white broken bone protruding from her leg; and her outflung arm, clawing frozenly at the tarmac. My heart froze too.

Then came the helicopter crash team; they rolled her over and their scissors ripped her clothes and their drips penetrated her body  -  and  I knew.  I knew.

They pumped and pushed and did their best.  But she was gone.

I stood at her feet and asked for her to be covered; I could not bear to see her naked chest.  They pulled the blanket to her chin; and I tried to pray for her, aloud.  Tried to thank God for all she was and had been to me and others; tried to ask Him to take her to Himself; committed her to the One who loved her the best.

And the paramedic had tears in her eyes.  “I’ve never heard anyone pray out loud before,” she said.  “Would you like her teeth? And her watch?”

I took the watch and turned to thank the paramedics and the police and the passersby.  People were so kind; so very kind.

But I was frozen.