Month: February 2018

Reconcilable Purity

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments

 

 

people-peoples-homeless-male.jpgHe said, “I get my meanness from the gutter and I get my kindness from God.” I sat down under the bridge with him and I said, “I think I could say the same.” He looked at me square in the eyes and I could see he was surprised by my response. He said, “You don’t look like you know much about the gutter.”

I smiled and said “looks can be deceiving don’t ya know?” Then he laughed. The sound of his laughter was one that made me smile. His laughter was like a nine month old baby’s belly laugh. The kind of laughter where nothing is held back and a sweetness of joy rings from it. I told him I had not laughed like that in ages and he said, “Oh you can only laugh like that when Fury and Thunder have cracked your soul and all the dark places have been opened up and cleaned out and all the pieces are strewn about and you cannot put them back together by yourself. I call it reconcilable purity. This laughter only occurs when you have lost your life to save it and when you were first but now you are last…”

I sat there in sober silence but something inside of me begin to tremble. “Who are you?” I whispered. He said, “I am just an old man who has been given a new heart and all day long I just like to go around and give my heart and life away to whoever might need it for a minute or two so that they can go about their day with some pure laughter…” The gorged veined, brown spotted hands palmed my face and the old man looked me in the eye and he said, “Go and be, not do. Go laugh and cry. Go and give your life away for someone else and you will see. You will laugh the laugh of “reconcilable purity.”

what I couldn’t know…

/ jill autrey dorman / 4 Comments

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What I couldn’t know…when I was a nursing student my instructor gave me an assignment that I have carried with me for forty years. I will never forget it because I gave loving gentle care to Jesus that night.
Stay with me… to get the whole and the depth of this picture I must confess that at that time in my life I lived in a what I call ” a well-intentioned but misinformed idea of Grace.” In my childhood and early adolescence Grace was very “sanitary” , if you follow me. It followed a certain prayer, then Baptism, the cleaning up your behaviour issues (or at least hiding them), and then good works followed that. At age twenty I had long well-known I could not live up to these rules but continued to pretend that I was ok…
So this happened…
I stepped into the room of a woman very ill. She did not speak nor open her eyes. I could see she was weary and when I reached to touch the bed sheets she grimaced embracing herself for what I couldn’t know. I was about to begin my assessment when my instructor, God bless her, said “take care now…you will be touching Jesus.” Oh how I weep when I remember those words.
When I pulled back the sheets the little emaciated body of the still silent woman was covered in bed sores. Her body was filthy, her finger and toe nails grown long and brittle. The sore on her spine was through to the bone so that even the breeze of my moving the sheet caused her to stiffen in pain. I turned to my instructor with a face full of question and overwhelmed I whispered “what am I to do for her?” She responded by nodding to a bath basin and many towels and simply said “you want to be a nurse now here is your chance.”
It took me two hours to peel off her filthy clothes and wash the dirt from her body and to dress each wound. The woman never spoke and her eyes remained closed. I only spoke gently to explain each of my actions. It was tedious and repetitive work. After I had dressed each bedsore and put a clean gown on her and of course, clean sheets I turned to leave. Only then did the woman look at me briefly and simply said in voice so strained and broken, “Thank you so much.”
I turned my head and smiled at her but her eyes were already closed again. I whispered that she was welcome. I stepped out into the hallway and in my unprofessional youth I leaned against the wall and cried and trembled. I cried because something in my soul told me that night that Grace is personal and intimate and sometimes very painful. I leaned my forehead against the door of that hospital room and a still small voice that seem to come from her room said, “whatever you do to the least of these my daughter, you have done it unto me.”
What I couldn’t know or fully grasp that night is I had begun my journey toward developing gratitude…and so much more pain and joy echoed down the road of Grace…

Relay Station

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments

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The “Cafe’ ” looked like 1950’s America. I should have known right then and there it was a relay station…ya know?  One of those places God has you stop in a while at different times in your life. You know what I mean don’t ya? BIRTH. EARTH. DEATH. HELL. HEAVEN…
Well anyway, back to the Cafe’. The splintered wooden sign above the door just read, Cafe’. That’s it… just one word on a green milk paint weathered sign with red letters. The old screen door looked freshly painted and was red too and right as you walk in there is a big chip board sign that said “Sweet Ice Tea 25¢…
Well, as it happens I was so bone weary and July Delta hot that I had to go in and get some sweet iced tea for a quarter no less!
Behind the counter stood the most beautiful charcoal skinned lady I have ever seen! Her skin was radiant like a diamond. Her chestnut-brown eyes were perfectly round and so clear they twirled like starlight from far away. Yep, I thought to myself…Relay station. The Lady looked up at me and smiled. She said all the usual stuff like “welcome, take a seat, etc…but then she called me “Darlin” and said “let me get you a big old glass of sweet ice tea!”
The Lady’s  melodic voice sounded like a song I had known all my life so what could I do but “take a seat.” The booths had that fake leather vinyl and a few of the seats were cracked with age. I noticed how clean they were. The formica table tops had once been white were now yellowed with age but the whole Cafe’ was tidy and clean the way any eatery should be…
Yep, I thought to myself again , “this is a relay station.”
Suddenly I became aware that the Lady was speaking to someone else although I didn’t see another soul in the place. She said, “You know you better get outta my Cafe’!!!. You know good and well you can’t be here! Now you get on outta here right now!”
I didn’t want to see who was getting such a dressing down so I just sat at my booth and looked down at my hands. I never saw or heard anyone else coming or going so I thought maybe the Lady was a little touched in the head, ya know?
I just sat there enjoying the coolness of the big attic fan whirring above me. I love the hum of an attic fan. It was blowing just enough to cool me about my head and shoulders but not so cold like some places do so that your teeth are chattering the whole time you’re trying to eat…
The Lady brought me a large, large glass of sweet ice tea and grinned at me with one of those “deep” kind of smiles. You know the kind of smile I mean? The kind of smile that shows the little lines and miles a person has travelled? Anyway, she had a comforting smile and I thanked her for the tea…
As the Lady walked back behind the counter we enjoyed the pleasure of silence. After a while I was lost in thought but I could hear the faint scraping of a spatula on a grill, with its own familiar melody. I began to feel a little stiff and sleepy so I sat up straight and started looking around the Cafe’. That is when I noticed all the photographs above
each booth and covering most of the wall space.
One photo was a WWII veteran and his beautiful chocolate skinned teenage bride. I recognized those big brown eyes as the Lady’s eyes. Boy she was a beauty! In another photo there were the same young couple with a handful of children. There were multiple shots of families with teenagers and old people smiling at the camera. There was even one or two pictures of a gathering of folks at a cemetery or a wedding…I began to feel so tired again and finally just put my head down on the old cool table top…
I was gently awakened by the awareness that the Lady was sitting across from me at my booth. She gazed at the photograph above my head of herself as a bride then she said, “something children don’t know, at least most children don’t, is that we are each strangers to our parents pain and woes. Strangers to their wounds and broken dreams. We rarely, if ever see their scars yet we are wholly formed by them. Losses and dreams they knew before we were born lay behind them like mountains they climbed over and when they got to the other side they just kept on moving forward and held on tight to the meaning of life. The meaning of it all is just this…move forward no matter what and just maybe the next child will have less wounds, less scars, and less broken dreams and the next generation will have more and more love and meaning and love and meaning and it just keeps us going for a reason, for the meaning that perhaps we cannot see so clearly and that is that we, each of us, are on the same road map. It is the curse and the beauty of humanity. We make it over that next hurdle.” she ended in a whisper. Then she looked into my eyes and that melodic voice said, “it is all just to wonderful to miss!”
As quick as a blink I had to cover both my eyes because a canopy of piercing white light began to rain down all over my head and shoulders and then like a shot out of a cannon there was an arc of shimmer silver light all over the Cafe’. The Lady touched my hand and I asked her what her name was and she said, “Hope.”

The next instant all was quiet and the Cafe’ was cool and serene again. The Lady was behind the counter working and humming that melody again. I looked around and everything in the Cafe’ was just like it was before. I took a last swig of my tea and lay some money on the table. As I headed toward the old screen door I turned to the Lady and asked, “Hope, who was that in here earlier that you told to leave?” She turned her head briefly and grinned and said, “oh, that old demon’s name is Despair. He tries to come into my Cafe’ with lots of folks traveling through but he knows he can’t stay where Hope is.”

I smiled and stepped through the screen door. I smiled in my heart and felt joy…do you know that kind of smile? The kind of smile that shows the lines and miles of a person’s journey. Then I looked back over my shoulder to see the Cafe’ once more and it was gone…
“Yep, just like I told y’all before, a relay station…

Bluebirds ( a tribute to my grandchildren) or If Spirituality Had a Voice…

/ jill autrey dorman / 1 Comment

I have four grandchildren. I secretly call them my little Bluebirds.  The newest one still remains in his Mother’s womb but he will be here in less than three weeks. The next youngest little bluebird arrived right before Christmas and she is growing strong and smiling. The third youngest is my three and a half- year old granddaughter and the oldest Bluebird is my six and a half year old a grandson.

I have learned from them, even the yet born grandson, that Wisdom is for the young!  Even my unborn grandson is woven into the wisdom of when HE is to enter the world. His parents don’t even know the time or day! That is wisdom. He will enter our world when he and God are ready!

I think if  “spirituality” has a sound it must be the voice of a child!  The stories that I have come to believe are the ones that occur in early evening  when the wind is still and I will come flying through their door and am allowed  to tuck them in bed and we will share a magic kiss and soar into the clear night sky like Bluebirds (Paul McCartney and Wings band song)…and we fly across the sea to a magic island or we go to an enchanted forest or visit Topper the Rabbit  who walks on two legs and has a fancy top hat and give us sweets and tea! Or we speak to The Holy God without theology but in total purity and trust! I can feel the Spirit of God enter the room on little tiny wings like a Bluebird…

I have come to see that what age teaches is not Wisdom but knowledge and knowledge cares nothing for me! With age I see if  allowed Wisdom is called something uninviting. A place where complacency, cynicism, and weariness can come to live.

I  rather choose to fly with my Bluebirds  in that place where just “being six”  is exciting and you just walk down the street singing at the top of your lungs just because you are six!!!  Or  soaring up into the heavens on the wings of a “nice” dragon is possible! And as all three-year old girls know it is so much more fun to turn all the lights out and use a flashlight even if it is the middle of the day! Oh and lets not forget the Wisdom of the newborn and infant…there isn’t one second where they do not trust the ones who hold them, feed them, and keep them safe and warm. 

Youth is the time in your life when you get to stand apart from the status quo and view almost everything in exaggeration! All is a wonder and I call that Wisdom. Oh yes I know there is a lot to be said for maturity but honestly it is NOT what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven! He said, “You must come like a child into God’s Kingdom.”pexels-photo-556669.jpeg

So, I tip my heart to all the Bluebirds in my life and to my first two Bluebirds, my daughters,  who taught me  when that time comes and The Holy Spirit slips through my door in the still night air  with that Holy Kiss I will fly like a Bluebird straight into the midnight air and head across the Sea…