Nana Broke the Santa

Splashing in puddles, eating the cheese off the pizza slice, watching Bubble Guppies and Winnie the Pooh while cuddling with her Nana, and being mesmerized by snow globes – these are a few of our granddaughter’s favorite things to do. Being the semi-dutiful grandmother to the lovely Madelyn Simone, I attempt to limit the puddle-splashing, especially in February, enforce the “now you have to eat the rest of the pizza” rule, and put boundaries on television time – although not on cuddling time.

But her fascination with snow globes created a dilemma for me. Since our darling granddaughter is still quite young, only celebrating her third birthday this week, glass snow globes are not the best choice of playthings. I understand that.  But since they are one of her favorite things, I couldn’t stop myself – a few weeks before Christmas, I purchased a Santa snow globe for her room (not a wise decision, but what’s a grandmother to do?)

I told Madelyn we’d keep it on her dresser and only take it down when Nana was there.. We talked about how we had to be very careful with the Santa, as it could break easily. One December afternoon, we lifted the Santa from the dresser and carried it to the living room couch, where we twisted the music key and listened to Jingle Bells as the ‘snow’ fluttered around Santa. Before we knew what was happening, the precious snow globe slipped out of ‘our’ hands and crashed to the floor, sending water and splinters of glass across the room. 

Madelyn was terribly upset by our accident, and kept announcing “Nana broke the Santa.” When her mother came home, she ratted me out.. “Nana broke the Santa.” She told her dad, her uncles, and her Pop-Pop. Good thing she’s not on Facebook. Talk about feeling guilty . . .

The subjects of blame, shame, responsibility and guilt are common themes that many people struggle with over the course of a lifetime.  How difficult it is to take full responsibility for our own actions. Our reflexive reaction is to find someone to blame – our parents, the dog, or even the old stand-by, “the devil made me do it.” To be able to say, “I broke the Santa” is an important step in maturing as an individual. Since I did share the blame for the Santa’s demise, I was willing to be the bad guy in this traumatizing scene. Yes, Nana broke the Santa.

The story doesn’t end there, for Madelyn also had a small butterfly snow globe on her dresser. Yes, you can guess where this is going. I let Madelyn hold it, and she was very careful, but when it was time to return it to a safe place, Madelyn defiantly grabbed it away from me, and it flew out of her hands, crashing to the floor in a replay of the Santa mishap. Her first reaction was to define her own narrative – “Nana broke the butterfly.” While Madelyn has no idea who President Dwight D. Eisenhower is, she instinctively knew the truth of his statement: “The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.” But I understood that to absolve this little girl of the responsibility for her actions in this scenario was the worst thing I could do. No, Madelyn, while Nana may have had a hand in the breaking of the Santa, you broke the butterfly.

More than two months later, with a replacement butterfly sitting on her dresser, we go over the same litany in every conversation and phone call. Madelyn says: “Nana broke the Santa, Mademyn broke the butterfly – we be veeeeery careful with the butterfly.” You’ve got it, my darling girl. Accidents do happen, as do deliberate acts that cause harm, and the best way to respond, long before you’re caught, is “If you mess up, ‘fess up.” I’m glad she’s getting the personal responsibility part down pat, an important life lesson to be sure.  – now we have to work on what it means to forgive and forget.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln

Holding up a plastic bag filled with pennies, five-year-old Greg asked me if we could go to the store to buy a wrestler. Where did our darling son get that money? He had found the coins I’d collected as a child, carefully nestled in their dark blue tri-folds, and proceeded to empty them out so he could spend them. Quite the resourceful child.

I was reminded of that story on Tuesday night, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, when attending the reception for the Kroc Center’s Elder in Residence program, now renamed the June Metcalf Elder in Residence award. The newest recipient of this honor is Mrs. Bernice Wachtel, an Abraham Lincoln aficionado and expert. A sampling from her wide collection of Lincoln memorabilia was on display at the reception, including cookie cutters, scrapbooks, and a Lincoln penny collection, just like the one Greg plundered all those years ago.

Grandma Bunny, as she is affectionately called, will be sharing her vast knowledge of Lincoln with the Kroc Center community over the next few months, demonstrating that life doesn’t end at 60, 70, or 80. Her energy and enthusiasm for Mr. Lincoln is contagious, and if you hear patriotic music booming from 527 East Liberty Street, you’ll know that Grandma Bunny is in the house!

Bunny isn’t the only Lincoln buff in Northeast Ohio, as photocopies of various portraits of the melancholy man line a wall in the office of Alexandra Nicholis Coon, the director of the Massillon Museum in Stark County. As a young art history student, she became intrigued with the work of presidential portrait painter William T. Mathews, a Navarre native. How many portraits of Lincoln did Mathews paint? Where did they go, and how did one end up at a garage sale? Coon’s detective work led to the recovery and restoration of some of Mathews’ work, conserving an additional thread of the Lincoln story for the future.

Why trace the art of a 19^th century portrait painter? Why collect 400+ books about a dead president? Why press 50-year-old pennies into a cardboard folder? We can certainly agree with author Bettina Drew when she tells us of the importance of the preservation of history: "The past reminds us of timeless human truths and allows for the perpetuation of cultural traditions that can be nourishing; it contains examples of mistakes to avoid, preserves the memory of alternatives ways of doing things, and is the basis for self-understanding..."

But in another statement, Drew warns of the danger of picking out “a little bit of history, as if history is a box out of which you can pull little pieces, and enjoy them on their own, with no connecting narrative.” Our young son completely missed any connecting narrative when he pulled those old pennies out of their slots. He didn’t know that the dull colored pennies from 1943 represented a change in composition due to the need for copper for the war effort, nor that President Theodore Roosevelt recommended that Lincoln’s image be added to the penny during the Lincoln Centennial Year in 1909. He had no idea what Abraham Lincoln meant to these United States. All he could see was the new wrestling figure he’d had his eye on for weeks.

Ms. Nicholis-Coon and Grandma Bunny get it. They understand the story behind the artifacts, they value the connections between people and ideas, and thus they honor the memory and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. On November 18, 1863, a man was asked to give an address to dedicate the battleground at Gettysburg. The honorable Edward Everett spoke for 2 hours, but his words are long forgotten. It was the brief words of the sad, mournful, almost haggard President that connect the narrative of his day to the world we live in. “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Thank you, Mrs. Wachtel, for connecting the narrative for us here in Ashland. Thank you, Mr. Lincoln, for the resolve that lives today. Happy birthday to you.

The Price of Soup

The stock market is up. Unemployment is down. The groundhog did not see his shadow, so spring is on its way. (I had to look that up, because I can never remember if the shadow is a good thing or not). The state of Ohio now has money in its rainy day fund, and the economy is looking up. So life is good, right?

Yes, it is, at least until I go to the supermarket.  What’s up with food prices? I started a large pot of vegetable soup this week with some carrots, celery, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and a bit of leftover chicken and beef. I needed to run to the store for some cans of tomatoes, beans, corn and peas, and I nearly had what my mom would call a conniption fit (anger or panic expressed verbally, loudly and with overt bodily gestures).  Do you know that the brand-name vegetables were over $1 per can? That’s highway robbery! By the time I added in a fresh-baked loaf of crusty bread, that trip to the store cost me nearly fifteen bucks, and I even bought some generic veggies – all for a pot of soup!

Just the week before I’d been whining about how expensive the ready-to-eat soup was, as in the kind with the pop-top lid that gets heated in the microwave. How could a can of soup cost more than $2.00?  I am going broke at the grocery store, and I don’t even have ravenous teen-agers at home any longer. I remember going to the store with a quarter for a loaf of bread. OK, so that was nearly 50 years ago, but I also remember going to the supermarket and paying a quarter for a bag of chips within the last year. Those same chips are now $.50 each, and I paid nearly $1.00 for a Delicious apple last week.  Is it just my imagination, or are we seeing an inflationary rise in the most basic of consumer goods – food?

Turning to the Internet, my source of choice for the scoop on just about any subject, I discovered quite a bit about what experts thought would happen to food prices both nationally and around the world.  The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) tells me that in 2012, there was a 1.8% increase in food prices, and their ERS (Economic Research Service) has issued their inflation forecast for both all food and food-at-home (grocery store) prices in 2013 – it will be a 3-4% increase. Blame it on last summer’s drought, higher feed prices, global warming or the demise of Hostess Twinkies, it looks like we haven’t seen the end of rising prices.

It wasn’t just the USDA that had an opinion on this. I discovered that the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations had a number of talking points about the geopolitics of food scarcity.  I found Oxfam’s words to be dire: “Millions of the world’s poorest people will face devastation from today’s rocketing food prices because the global food system is fatally flawed and policy-makers can’t find the courage to fix it.” And I’m complaining about the cost of a can of soup?

No wonder the enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) is continuing to rise, and emergency food pantry usage is going through the roof. Right here in our town, and around the country.

I do clip coupons, look for sales, and purchase some generic items, but those measures can only go so far. And while I do plan to plant a larger garden this summer (hopefully with better success), canning is not on my agenda. How much farther can we stretch a dollar?

Are there any bright spots on the food front? Since I’m a “count your many blessings” kind of person, I’m glad to report that when Larry and I go to see the awesome Ashland University women’s basketball team (can you spell UNDEFEATED?), my older husband gets into the games for the senior citizen rate of $3.00, leaving us enough money in our entertainment budget to share a popcorn. Who knows – maybe this week he’ll even spring for a hotdog!

The God Gallery: Images of the Holy Introduction

Introduction

To visualize that which doesn't exist, yet to believe with confidence that it can be realized, is truly something miraculous.

 Richard Sagor

Welcome to the God Gallery

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God himself, and the most portentous fact about any man [or woman] is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.

A.W. Tozer

How do we see God? What is God like? What does God look like? Ask the question of a group of young children and we’re likely to get a description of a slender Santa Claus dressed in white, sitting on a throne, maybe with some harp-strumming angels in the background. That may be a common image of God, but it’s not one that’s quite scripturally accurate. As Jesus reminds us in John 6:46, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”

 Yet it has been an intriguing question since creation, when God pronounced that people were created in the image of God. However, we have no photos, no video, and no portraits that show us who God is or what God looks like, and those who saw God face to face were at a loss for words in their attempt to describe the glory that they experienced. 

Although we have no video footage, what we do have is the Bible, a collection of writings inspired by God, and the pages of the Bible reveal the face of God through the use of words and images. Some of these images are revealed in the actions of God, some are from the world of nature (fire, rock), some provide a glimpse of God through the animal world (lion, lamb, eagle), while still others come from relationships between people (father, mother, and bridegroom).

 

THE FULLNESS OF GOD

Christ the path and Christ the door.

Christ the bread and welcome cup.

Christ the word and cleansing bath.

Christ the robe and Christ the fire.

Christ the dawn and blazing sun.

Christ the light and Christ the star.

Christ the beginning and the end.

Christ our life and Christ our home.

Samuel Torvend

 

What sometimes happens in our faith development is that we get stuck on one or two images of God that limit our understanding of the Almighty. It’s as though we have one picture sitting on our nightstand, and we fail to see that there’s a gallery lined with images just waiting for us to step in and see for ourselves. The chapters of this book are designed to be a series of artwork hanging on the wall of a God gallery of images that will help us to know God better.

As we wander through the gallery, we will find what Pat McCloskey understands, that “God is neither an ogre in the Hebrew Scriptures nor an indulgent grandfather in the New Testament. The Bible contains varied images of God because God inspired diverse images.”

While we may find a favorite image or two, what we will come to see is that no one image of God stands alone. It is only when taken together that we see the mercy and justice, the glory and the grace, and the majesty and intimacy of our God. As an example, we see that combination of images in Zephaniah 3:17.

The Lord your God is with you: God as Companion
The Mighty Warrior who saves: God as Warrior
He will take great delight in you: God as Party Host
In his love he will no longer rebuke you: God as Abba
But will rejoice over you with singing: God as Chief Musician

We do have a wide selection of images available to us on the pages of Scripture, and we also have the model given to us through the life of Jesus. These provide us with a good sense of the nature and person of God, but while we continue to walk the earth as humans, we still find that “we see through a glass darkly,” as Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 13:12, for God is beyond our full understanding.  However, as Paul promises and as the old hymn echoes, one day we shall “see him face to face.” But until that day, we can draw closer to God by spending time in the gallery of God images that the Bible provides for us.

 

The Story of Our Bridge

From today's Ashland Times-Gazette column:

When I read the Times-Gazette report of the recent meeting to sort out what to do with the Rt. 42 bridge that spans Rt. 250 (our Main Street), I was reminded of the nursery rhyme, London Bridge is Falling Down. In that children’s song, a number of alternatives are offered. Perhaps the bridge could be repaired with wood and clay (might wash away), bricks and mortar (won’t stay), iron and steel (will bend and break) or silver and gold (will get stolen).  Ultimately, the nursery rhyme determines that a man should be posted to watch all night (I suppose so that the gold and silver doesn’t get stolen), and, in case he falls asleep, he is to be given a pipe to smoke to keep him awake. Not quite the appropriate solution for today’s world, is it?

What about our bridge?  A recent study showed that the bridge needs major rehabilitation or replacement, for while it may not be falling down yet, it’s definitely seen better days, and the 50+ year old lady isn’t quite tall enough to meet current federal specifications. She was built before I-71 stole away much of her Cleveland to Columbus traffic, and since she doesn’t extend over a river or a railroad track, the question has come up – do we even need her? So what shall we do about our bridge?

Enter ODOT (the Ohio Department of Transportation). This is the section of our “we the people” government that is charged with designing and maintaining our roads and bridges. I’m glad ODOT is working for us, because with their involvement, we don’t all have to be experts on bridge design – we can use the expertise of those with training and experience in the transportation field for that. But I’m also glad that they aren’t the playground bully, insisting on the “my way or else” mode of decision-making. Instead, the representatives from ODOT and Glen Stewart, our Ashland mayor, actually asked the people of Ashland what they think about it!

As Missy Loar of the Times-Gazette reported, Allen Biehl, deputy director for ODOT District 3, said the "worst" projects are those without public input. "It's a big project for the city of Ashland, so we want to get it right," Biehl said. Good for him.

No matter whether we end up with option 1, option 8, or something in between, I’m just glad they asked. While I didn’t attend the meeting, about 100 of my neighbors did, and they (and all of Ashland, through the coverage of the Times-Gazette) got to hear about the possible solutions and to weigh in on their viability.

There is something about being welcomed to the table of conversation that is empowering to both the community and to its leaders. As Nelson Mandela taught us, “As a leader... I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion.”

 As I’ve discovered over many moons of life experience, sooner or later someone has to make a decision about whatever the presenting problem is – what to eat for supper, how to manage a conflict, or what to do about our bridge. But I am much more willing to support the final decision when I’ve had a chance to listen and to be heard.  And what’s really amazing is that sometimes, in talking with each other, new solutions are discovered that even the experts may not have considered.  Who would have thought?

The story of the Rt. 42 bridge stands as a symbol of what bridges can do within a community, whether they are brick and mortar construction or the links between people of divergent interests, backgrounds and priorities. Whether the Rt. 42 bridge is restored or removed, my hope is that the connections being formed in our community through ODOT-led discussions, mediation, community-wide forums and conversations over coffee will remind us of the value of shared decision-making and respectful dialogue– building bridges instead of walls.