Red and Yellow, Black and White, They are Precious in His Sight

"I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony..." went the famous Coca-Cola ad that I grew up hearing. There were a bunch of hippie-type folk with candles, multiple colors and nationalities of people, all swaying and singing together. The 1970s world I was living in was learning to adjust, grappling with the issues of all the changes going on in our culture. There was integration-by-design, logistical problems of bussing children to different districts so that there would be "equality" and racial balance in the schools. It was a strange time, but there needed to be change. Whether it was done correctly or not, I'm not here to judge. 

But what I do know is that God talks about this subject thirty-four times in the Scriptures. He calls people to Himself from "every tribe, tongue and nation." And until they are all represented, it says that Christ will not return. Being from the deep South, where some folks seem to think the devil lives (well, he IS the prince of the power of the air, that, but it's not limited to the deep South), there were so many wrong deeds and evil done. If you're living on the planet Earth, from any place anywhere, at some point there has been (and is being done), much evil. There is no single people group anywhere that is immune to the depravity of man. 

When I think of that idyllic commercial, with the pretty people of all races and creed singing together, I think about the makeup of heaven. Let me tell you, if you will look, you will find that within the simplicity of the Word of God there are the keys to peace, to unity, to so many of the world's questions. This Sunday morning, as I sat in church (I sit down front beside the piano, so I can see out there really good)...I wanted to weep. Because all across our quiet, gentle, kind, Word-centered church were all manner of people sitting together, worshipping God. I saw threads of Irish, English, Ethiopian, African, Scottish, Hispanic, Greek, German, Dutch, and the always essential Duke's Mixtures of humankind. In the end, we are all a "Duke's Mixture." Another simple story from the Scriptures, that most young children know, the one about Noah and a giant boat...not truthfully a children's level reading, because it's actually pretty gruesome, where only a few people (and animals) make it through a big, bad storm. There were eight folks on that ark, four human couples plus two of every kind of animal (seven of every clean animal).  They got through, made it out and then repopulated the earth. Look at it -- we're all cousins. Even the secular world has proven it out in science...that we all hark back to a simple human line...they even call that first mother "Eve." So guess what? We're all related. All. Of. Us. There are many, many cultures, but we are all kinfolk. We are all human. The concept of race is really a cultural construct rather than an actual race. We are the human race, with a beautiful range of colors and hues, faces, eyes, fingers. I heard a dear, young pastor say that our big problem is that we don't know God and we don't know each other.

And that's the real goal...to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. All these biblical themes...amazing that He wrote all that down for us. We need to read it and heed it. It's all there.

The Fruits of the Prosaic

Practice! The dread of it was real. I was an 11-year-old dreamy-eyed girl when Mama signed me up for piano lessons with our neighbor. I got off the bus on Thursday afternoons, waited at Elsie's house for my turn, then went into a tiny back room to learn the piano. Elsie was amazing. When she played, the world began to swirl around my head. It was like peering into the Milky Way, seeing things I had never seen before. Something in my heart opened and the music seeped in like honey. She loved classical music, which I had recently discovered from two albums Mama bought me at a yard sale, Beethoven's Fifth and the Pastoral Symphony. After I learned a few basics, Elsie put me on a book with lots of little Mozart pieces --wiggly, happy forays that made you think of sprites and fairies in springtime. 

I have ever been a busy girl, easily distracted and in need of various, tortuous types of accountability. What else does an 11-year-old need in order to practice? But it was, and is, the challenge of my life. There were fields and kittens to explore, my sister and the neighbor girls to ride bikes with, basketballs and softballs to throw, grass to be mown. A week would go by so very quickly and Thursday's bus ride was filled with sad contemplation of a poor lesson, all because I had failed to practice enough. "You have promise!" she said. I knew it was true. The notes flew easily from my long fingers, the interpretation flowed like a river from my heart. But when the mundane reality of scales and consistency broached my life, I fell short much of the time. Why be humdrum, when there were so many sparkles elsewhere? Six years of lessons can only take you so far, when you don't apply yourself. Basketball, high school band and my new flute, track team, clubs, socializing and the ever-circling spectre of boys kept a lid on any serious piano goals. Fired by two good teachers, I missed the gold that was there under my phalanges. 

Here we are, how many decades later? I somehow stuck with the flute all these years. It's simpler, sings with a voice and is super portable. I've kept up the practice, though without much real knowledge and no lessons. I finally bit the bullet and paid for lessons during the plandemic, with a wonderful lady from Los Angeles. Whoever knew we'd be Zooming instructions from across the other side of the world? I realized, for the first time in my life, that scales were indeed the magic sauce. And that all the workaday parts that I dreaded were the very thing that laid a foundation for everything else. If you do your scales, the other stuff is easy. Who knew? 

I play with the Carrollton Wind Ensemble every Tuesday night. We do multiple concerts all year (fall concert is October 13th at the Carrollton Fine Arts center, ya'll), difficult pieces that make my head swim. I complain every semester about the level of impossibility that our conductor, Terry Lowry, hoists upon us. I mumble "how am I supposed to do my day job?" pretty much every time the new music is introduced. I agonize over my distractions...very real, important ones... grandchildren, children, husband (the hunky one that still circles) , job(s), church, friends (socializing is good for your soul) and of course my Mama and siblings. Every turn of the seasons, I question whether I should continue to try to hang with this ensemble, constantly forcing myself to do the requisite practicing and treks to rehearsals and performances, when I have so many other noble obligations. Some weeks I practice nearly every day, then others I might get one session in. The agony weighs on me sometimes. Or often. 

In stressful duty mode, I pick up my flute and begin the banal scales. I sound like a rusty tin whistle. The playing starts to clear out my throat and sinuses. I begin to breathe deeper, opening up my head and lungs. The fingers relax and move, remembering patterns. Before you know it, I've worked through the scales and arpeggios and everything begins to flow. Then comes a lovely etude and the sound starts to warm, the rich silver of the flute coming alive. The deep, sonorous tones from this lovely instrument (that I sold a house for) are like liquid gold. I stop and thank God for it, even though I often feel guilty for having bought something so expensive. Then I remember that I really did work hard for it and maybe it's okay. For God so loved the world (and me)... Then the honey seeps in and I recall why I do this and what music does for my soul. Besides, it's all over the scriptures, about singing, instruments, even God's ideas about it. Heaven is gonna be full of music, the expression of the heights of the glory of God. I'm so happy we get to go ahead and start early, down here.   

Decadent Decade

I was walking the new puppy this morning (yes, Ken let me...and her name is Scout) and many thoughts came pouring forth. She's an Aussiedoodle, the grandbaby of our Sadie girl (who is an Australian Shepherd, almost human). One of my strong motives for getting a second dog is the biblical adage: two are better than one. Numerous members of my family think that I am nuts for procuring a second dog, particularly a puppy. But I believe she will be good for Sadie, will keep her company when I'm busy or gone, and will all-around be better for everybody, even me, who needs to get my hinder parts off the chair and do something to bump some of this rust off. Meanwhile, I'm already sleep-deprived and trying to figure out how to train a puppy after all these years. I have a little schedule. We'll see how that goes.

As I was walking through the yard, remembering our first Aussie, Zoe, and her early days as a pup, it struck me that it has been ten years ago since we brought her home. A decade ago that flew by like a minute. We like to think that nothing ever changes, because sometimes the minutes drag by. We might be too acclimated to 30-minute sitcoms, where a week's worth of activity gets summed up in 20 minutes, if you take out the commercials. I was fatter, ten years ago, but much more limber. Real estate was still slow, though my art business was steady. We had recently moved into our delightful Victorian home in Villa Rica, all three of our sons married and our daughter away at college. It was a sweet, very quiet time. When Elizabeth would come home on her breaks from school, she and I would pal around and talk on the cool front porch. Then we'd paint something in the house, eventually getting it all beautiful. We had no grandchildren and it was a brief, still season. Then the harvest began to come in...

Three grandchildren in the space of about 7 months, and then they began rolling in like a gold rush. In a couple of years, real estate started cranking up, a dribble at first and then a geyser. These years, on my most frantic days, I threaten to throw up my hands, put all our grandkids on a boat and find a nice island somewhere. The Scriptures say that children are the crown of the aged and boy do I love them crowns. What a difference a decade makes. To every season, turn, turn, turn... 

Happy Hope Days

There's just something about the gloaming between seasons here that is also downright gloomy. When winter hangs over the skies like a bloated ghost, or summer moons about with its oppressive heavy blanket, as if it thinks it's Savannah or something. Have you ever been to Savannah in August or September? By then, the mosquitoes are so heavy with human blood, their bellies are dragging the ground. I can't even imagine what it was like before the advent of air conditioning down there. It was bad enough up here in the ole' Piedmont, though we really didn't know any different, if the truth be told. 

But you can't stay gloomy when there's a baby involved. We knew that a grandson was on the horizon and that his Mama was pert-near beside herself to get him on out here with the rest of us. Our son, Jesse and she had had quite the trial of getting him to fruition. They have three hale and hearty children: Eden, 9, Titus, 7 and Tate, 6. They tried and lost four dear babies in the last year before the Lord brought this little boy. They tell you not to be anxious, to not worry, to trust the Lord...we all say those things. To walk in it and be at peace is quite another thing.

Bailey was determined not to use pain medications or an epidural with this labor. She said that epidurals had caused her earlier labors to stall, so she didn't want that to happen again. Even though they hooked her up to a pitocin drip, which is code for devil's brew, she was hanging tough many, many hours later with this labor. I didn't open my mouth about it, because mother-in-laws should not (unless they are asked). Even though I am a massive proponent of natural childbirth and did it myself twice (and tried valiantly a couple of times before that), I didn't see how she could possibly make it all the way through with that cocktail of labor meanness they had hooked up to her veins. That stuff brings teeth grinding to new levels and the expression "peeling oneself off the ceiling" becomes reality. Her Daddy, Mama, my son and I held her hands, prayed, rubbed her back, hummed through contractions and wondered if it would ever end. She soldiered on until the doctor checked her and said she still had a good ways left to go. She cried out in agony, still refusing the medications. My heart cried out for her, remembering the pain of my own labors with her husband and my other babies. In the midst of it, time indeed stands still and the advent of the child that is so wanted, so feared-for, so needed to be delivered...seems to never actually arrive. The pain is indescribable and indeterminable. You wonder how long you can take it, and whether it will go on forever. It is not dissimilar to the waiting upon a loved one to die, wondering whether their next breath is their last. But on this end, the happy result is life, as difficult as that can and will be, with all its resulting responsibilities and uncertainties. 

She paused, calmed herself. She turned to Jesse, her husband (my son) and said, "Please turn on my music." He pulled up a playlist on his phone, fast-forwarded past a few songs and then began playing one that spoke about strength, about not leaning on our own but God's, about not caving into fear, about fear not being our future. We were all praying, tears streaming down our faces. In those moments I saw a new resolve come over her, as if the Spirit overcame her flesh. And that's really what happened. Somehow, she mustered through and in those next hours, that young Mama relaxed into her pain, trusted, breathed, let go and gave way to let that big old baby boy out. She felt the need to push, the doctor came in and said, "Sorry, you're still not ready" and walked out the door. Before the doc got 15 feet down the hall, Bailey said, "I'm pushing!" and Matthias Slate Norton was born into this world, all 9 pounds, 4 ounces of him. 

So on a gloomy, hot, humid Southern day, the sun and the Son broke through. There's hope in the world and the world just keeps on turning...