Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Waiting On a Miracle

My grandmother, Martha Louise Hollingsworth Williams, passed away earlier tonight sometime around 6:45 p.m. at the ripe old age of 84. I wrote this some three weeks ago. It didn't seem appropriate to post at that time.

Sunday, November 4

I laid awake in bed for a long time last night, staring at the ceiling of a small bedroom with blue walls and red carpet. The room once belonged to my father during his adolescent days. Now the room receives as many visitors as my family receives visits from their eldest son to the chaotic, sprawling metropolis of Atlanta.

I'm in Georgia right now, having made a hurried decision Friday night to leave Saturday morning to visit some three hours away for an indefinite period of time. And being that the house that I grew up in has gotten no larger over time, and that the people it housed through my formative years have gotten larger, I made the short trip across the street to my grandmother's house to spend the night on a bed rather than a couch.

My grandmother's house is quite a contrast to my immediate family's home. She, an 84-year-old widow, is about as unorganized as a fishing tackle box. It seems that every little thing of her's has its own unique place, along with other related things. There are entire rooms that see little to no activity for extended periods of time. The notion even came to me last night that her floors are so clean that I could probably eat a meal off of the kitchen linoleum.

Now, it should be noted that there is a strong contrast also between an 85-year-old, petite woman living alone in a three-bedroom house and six people ages 12-55 living in a smaller three-bedroom house. Still, it makes for an odd transition at night. In some ways, I feel like I'm introducing calamity to a seas of tranquility just by pulling back the covers of the bed to lay down for the night.

But that's not what really kept me up last night. Though exhausted from the day, what denied me rest was the same thing that caused my impromptu 200-mile visit, my grandmother.

Since Oct. 13, she has not slept in this house, but instead has split time between a hospital and now a "rehabilitation center," which is really just a euphemism for what is truly a nursing home. What started as her not feeling well quickly escalated into a loss of most of her faculties, both physically and mentally. Doctors were optimistic when they gave the order to move her into this "rehabilitation center," but now it appears that those hopes were ill-conceived and really just efforts to delay the inevitable. Someone didn't want to be the bearer of bad news.

It's been a hard three weeks since then for my family, especially my father and my great aunt, my grandmother's only child and only sister. I know that it's also been difficult for the rest of the family (my mother and four siblings), but I suppose what I didn't anticipate was the struggles I would face through this turmoil. Because as I looked into her eyes yesterday afternoon for some two hours, listening to the ramblings of someone that is neither fully in the present nor in the past, I became troubled that our physical bodies break down in such heart-breaking fashion.

As I spoke to her and with her yesterday, it was very evident that the synapses in her brain were misfiring, though trying so hard to make sense of things. I heard about a lady named Venita, and an unnamed girl that was "so cute" but was "mad as all get-out at me and pulled my hair." I heard her tell the story of her seeing a man walk down a road and deciding to flirt with him, and about how her husband Clarence and son David were probably "off getting into trouble somewhere" because she hadn't seen them in a while. "Does anyone have a piece of chocolate candy?"

A mere 21 days earlier, she probably feared ending up in the situation that she is in now, I thought as I laid in bed last night. I now here she is, seemingly a prison to the combination of time, age and what is probably the "miracle" of modern medicine prolonging a life that is past due. She remains my paternal grandmother but yet is bereft of the pride she carried about for 85 years. Flashes of that soft-spoken pride flashed occasionally yesterday afternoon, but most of what I saw was a person returning to the state in which she entered the world and human life breaking down to make way for the life eternal to truly take hold.

What is most troublesome in watching this take place is new-found understanding and old ignorance. I now understand what it means to truly want God to bring someone Home. In this world of temptations and sin and ill-placed desires, it's so difficult to see that it is far better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. But I've never seen this contrast so clearly as I did yesterday. And I feel bad for saying that somehow..."are you really praying for someone to die?"

And then there's just my own ignorance. How does God receive glory from this, a person losing herself in the clutches of age, having to be cared for completely by both family and strangers? Is there dignity in dying this way? Why the pain? How does the duration of time please God? As David cried out, "How long, O Lord?"

And in the midst of two hours yesterday, I sensed a quiet fierceness and strength resonating within her that I can only guess is the true person, the soul just bursting at the seams, waiting to break forth into eternal glory from the broken-down temporal shell that is holding her captive.

"I'm so tired of this...I'm just waiting for a miracle," she said to me, gripping my hand. "I just want a miracle so I can feel normal..."

"Your miracle will come soon, Granny Lou. It will come soon," I answered.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Seeking Solitude

Through careful analytical self-examination, I've discovered that a true relaxing day can't really occur at home anymore...at least not during the school year. It's not that I don't enjoy people, because I sort of have to as part of my job, but there comes a point where I don't want, and sometimes can't, engage with people anymore.

Wednesday was Bryan's Day of Prayer, and having things to attend to on campus, the day featured very little prayer of any kind. I slowly began to feel myself close up inside and close off to the world around me. And I began to wonder if I'd lost focus on what I am doing and why I do it. There's a certain feeling I come across from time to time that can only weakly be described as a "lostness." So today I turned off my cell phone (true liberation) and set off to find a place where no one would find me.

I headed north on highway 27 and came to one of those gas station/Subway/another smaller food chain establishment that is really only inviting in the South. Grabbing a sandwich, I kept moving west of the town of Spring City, took a sharp left onto a rather ominous-sounding "Shut-In-Gap Road" and snaked my way up a dilapidated mountain road and into the strange and magical area known as "Luminary."

In truth, Luminary is only strange of its own accord and not really magical. The mysterious element comes purely from the storytelling its odd nature encourages. The area doesn't really have a town-center or even a "community" center, but is rather a collection of small dirt roads scurrying off into wooded darkness, rundown houses and trailers, junk heaps, farm animals and lots of untouched land. Somewhere along the way on this road is the Stinging Forks Pocket Wilderness, which features Stinging Fork Falls conveniently, one of the prettiest bits of nature I've ever seen.

Being that I had passed less than half a dozen cars since leaving Spring City, I ventured a guess that this might be an ideal place for solitude and silence, and my expectations were completely met. The small parking area was empty when I arrived, and pleasantly enough, I didn't see another soul the entire time (just because a parking lot is empty doesn't mean you should expect to not run into someone in Luminary).

Stinging Forks' waterflow wasn't the greatest, but its canyon-like location at the bottom of a sharp descent made for a quiet afternoon of reading Scripture, prayer, staring at a blue sky, reminiscing about good times and anticipating future ones. The cascading water over the exposed rock of the falls often called to mind Ephesians 2:10's words that the believer is God's workmanship, a work of art, a "poema", in progress that takes time to create. And it made me wonder what this area looked like over time as the water continually wore a path over the rock and eroded away earth to create beauty.

I suppose the Christian life is a constant state of erosion, where God is stripping away layers of selfishness, pride, lust, greed, anger, etc., in order to bring us closer to the image of Christ and redeem us from this fallen world. And though we could think that our glorified "poema" will only be viewed in Heaven, is it too much to think that maybe God is revealing some of the art today in this mortal world, through creation and through his own children? I couldn't help thinking so today, sitting on a weathered rock in Luminary.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Memory Lane

To the bottom left of this page is a section titled "Memories." I haven't the foggiest notion what a xanga "memory" is, but recently, my mind has been drawn to the subject of times past and my current recollections of those times.

Somehow or another, on two separate occasions last evening, the topic of my college days came up between myself and a pair of friends. And in the midst of discussing where I am now in contrast to where I was then, I became keenly aware of a couple of things.

A. I'm very happy as a 29-year-old that has left the high school and college days behind him and is slowly but steadily coming out of the quarter-life crisis era. And...

B. I think my memories of college and other times of life are far better than the actual events were that inspired those memories.

That probably sounds foolish and pseudo-intellectualized, but what I am trying to say is that the more I think back to those times, the fonder those memories become, to the point that they're almost fictionalized accounts of a smaller truth. I suppose it's similar to storytelling. Historically, storytelling has held a great place in the development of cultures and societies, yet the story doesn't quite stay the same but evolves over time into something, presumably, greater than the preceding version of the story.

I find the same true in my own life. Not that I grossly embellish the actual facts of a moment or scenario (at least not too much) but the life that I experience between the memory and the present seems to add its own flavor and perspective to the memory, making for something like fine wine that's had time to age and mature.

So when my friends asked me if I, working currently with college students presently, miss the college days, I had to say no, because at this point I'm not even sure what the true college days were like. The memories of those times seem so far away that I'm not even totally sure how accurate they are anymore.

But I can say that I enjoy those recollections fondly. It was a good time of life that I was blessed to have. And if I'm enjoying this present life as much as I am know, then I can only wonder what distortions of this present age will present themselves into fond memories in the future.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Lessons From the Diamond

Tonight, I was given a reprieve from what has become my usual twice-a-week James 1:9 experience.

You see, sometime around the end of April, two of my fellow B.C. workers had the clever idea of fielding a Bryan College softball team to compete in a local league through May and June. By my experience, finding enough interested players to compete together as a team can be quite a task, but surprisingly some 15 players committed to playing every Monday and Thursday evenings for two months. So where does James 1:9 come into play, you may be asking. Well, a look at the reference reads like this:

"The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position."

See, Dayton has been known for years as a hotbed for softball, where disgruntled middle-age men that once had visions of making it out of Dayton and into the big leagues take out their frustrations on a bloated baseball that, contrary to its name, is anything but soft. But even I, as a former local sports writer, had no idea exactly how competitive the league would be.

I could tell early on in the season that this was not just your average social softball league but was more like playing paintball with guys holding real guns. Early in the first game, a baserunner from the other team narrowly missed colliding with our firstbaseman trying to beat out a throw. "What am I supposed to do, huh! Tell me what I am supposed to do when he's standing like that! What am I supposed to do, damnit!" the man yelled at the umpire, nearly breaking into tears. In fairness to him, the firstbaseman was a tad bit in his baseline path and even admitted to the umpire, but the umpire, probably peeved that a 35-year-old, beer-bellied father of three was crying like a baby in a recreational league softball game, called the runner out anyway.

Let me just say that the Bryan College softball team is just a tad bit behind in its group chemistry and passion compared to these other teams. We've yet to have an outburst like the aforementioned man, and some of the teams we've squared off with have played together as a team for five years or more. That's right...these guys keep their same teams each year. They probably hold practice and run windsprints, for crying out loud. They even wear baseball pants and chew tobacco!

Consequently, James 1:9 has come into play several times over the last few weeks for myself. Instead of taking pride in wins, we take pride in playing hard. Instead of 1-2-3 innings, we pat each other on the back when the other team only scores five runs in an inning. Instead of applauding diving catches on line drives, we applaud each other for getting out of the way of that hotshot that would have "totally taken your leg off, man!" Ah, life is all about perspective...and counting the cost.

So it was with some deal of relief when I heard that our game had been forfeited because our coach had mistakenly told us the wrong time for the game. But after deeper thought, I realized that our opponent was the team that we actually have a really good chance of beating (that's right, I haven't witnessed a win yet, though I hear the first game of the season we won when I was out of town), and our next opponent is none other than the team that left the biggest mark on us this season.

On that fateful night, the other team put up twenty, 2-0, one less than 21, runs against us before the end of the first inning! Everyone on the team batted around at least three times, with the exception of a hairy man with glasses that simply stood beside first base, laughing the entire time like a lunatic (I found out later on that he never plays but is more like the team's cheerleader or good luck charm or something). If we pulled the outfield in, the batter knocked the ball over the fielders and sometimes the fence. If we played deep, they'd hit it over the infield for hits. At one point, I, playing third base, somehow saved my manhood while simultaneously gloving a hard hit ball that felt like stopping a cannonball, but by the time I had cocked my arm back to throw the runner out at first, he had safely reached base, almost as if he had a teleporter that took him directly from the batter's box to the bag. The game ended after three innings, since one team (I'll let you guess which one) trailed by more than 20 runs.

Later that night, I leaned against my truck, took a deep breath and stared up into the sky, replaying the short, yet oh-so-lengthy massacre that had just taken place. "What are you doing," Kati asked me, doing her best to hide a smile that had been breaking across her face throughout the whole ordeal. "Oh, I'm just letting this all sink in," I replied. "You know, it's sort of cathartic."

"The sting of defeat," I thought to myself, "is sort of like a really hard massage that hurts like heck when it's going on, but soon afterwards, that slow burn sets in and the muscles begin to lounge about in a drunken state of euphoria. Yes, this will be used for good. It's not a bad thing to lose like this once in a while to humble me.............what the heck am I talking about? This is awful."

If you want to learn about gravity, go jump off a building, if you want to understand shoes, find some broken glass and walk on it wearing nothing more than socks and if you want to learn humility, play recreational league softball in East Tennessee.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Swashbuckled in Dunlap

Monday night featured a trip for Kati and I to one of the few remaining drive-in theatres, located in Dunlap, Tennessee, a small mountainous town 45 minutes southwest of Dayton. For quite a while, we'd wanted to experience the America of yesteryear by viewing a show outside on the big screen under the stars. It seemed every time we had the desire to make the drive though, the theatre would be featuring award-winners like National Lampoon's Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. This week's feature was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and given that we had recently survived the lengthy sequel to the original Pirates of the Caribbean, we thought it appropriate to take advantage of the opportunity before Not Another Teen Movie made its way back to Dunlap for an encore performance. Here's a link to the theatre in case you want to make your own trip.

We found the nature surroundings of Dunlap to be seemingly untouched, captivatingly lush over rough terrain, as the truck pulled its way up a series of inclines on TN-111. Eventually, the Ranger crested at a sign noting that there would be a 6% grade over the next four miles, and soon thereafter the view opened up to reveal a host of lights decorating the town. Inside Dunlap's downtown, it was clear to both of us that the small community deserved a day trip of exploration. We were especially interested by a sign pointing to the Historic Dunlap Coke Oven Park, a 62-acre reserve protecting a large quantity of coke ovens, once used in the early 20th century to convert coal into industrial coke. Next weekend the park is scheduled to host its annual Coke Ovens Bluegrass Festival, which I imagine is a big a deal to Dunlap as the Strawberry Festival is to Dayton, which basically is comparable to me looking forward to the second weekend in March for the ACC Conference Tournament or my dad getting excited about a 24-hour Walton's marathon. It's all about perspective.

I suppose that I expected to find a drive-in theatre somewhere far away from lights and traffic, but the Dunlap Drive-in was so close to the town that I probably would have driven all the way to Whitwell (pronounced "Whu-wu" by residents) had Kati not spotted the small turnoff. (In truth, her initial thought was "well, if we can't find the drive-in we can come back and watch the movie at this theatre that's playing it.) At the drive-thru window where movie-goes pay admission, we found a man in his 60s that could best be described as "a nice old man." He smiled at us, mentioned something about us "getting there just in time" for the 9:25 showing, something else about how hazy it was tonight but how "he" (I'm not sure who "he" was) has decided to go ahead and start the picture and something more that I really couldn't understand more than to know that I should just smile and ease off the break.

Somewhere along the way in my thinking I imagined the theatre would be like a big open field with cars parked about haphazardly, but there were actual parking spots on gravel roads, situated in between poles that I presumed once served as mounts for car speakers back in the day. Now, the sound comes through FM frequency. I backed the truck into a space, put down the tailgate, laid out a sleeping bag over the twin bed mattress that fit perfectly into the truck bed and sat back against the cab, relishing the purchase of my truck some four years ago. Anyone that owns a truck needs to take it to a drive-in theatre.

We were pleasantly surprised by everything the place offered and for the price. The sound quality coming through the truck's speakers was good, tickets were $5 each and a large drink and popcorn could be purchased for another $5. The theatre has been operated since 1950, and by the same man since 1963 (who I guess could be "he" now that I think about it.).

Unfortunately, I can't be as positive about the movie at hand. Pirates 3 is about as clever and entertaining as Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy....but twice as long. For most of the movie, I kept asking myself questions like "Now what are they going after?" "Who's on who's side?" "Why did they have to do that?" and "Did I really just subject myself to a wedding that literally happened in the midst of an epic battle scene?" The Elizabeth Swann character climbed her way a notch or two higher on the annoying meter, Orlando Bloom did an amazing job doing little other than pouting throughout the film and even Johnny Depp's portrayal of the endearing Jack Sparrow seemed lost. Clocking in at nearly 15 minutes shy of three hours long, this film could have been decent at two hours. As it is though, I can't even call it that.

The night was saved though by Dunlap's charm and mystery, something that will undoubtedly lead to a return trip in this summer of possibilities.