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Glasgow, Scotland
Words are formed by experiences, and words inform our experiences. Words also transform life and the world. I am a writer and Presbyterian minister who grew up in the 1960's in the segregated South of the United States. I've lived in Alaska, the Washington, DC area, and Minnesota. Since 2004 I've lived in Glasgow, Scotland, where I enjoy working on my second novel and serving churches that are between one thing and another. I advocate for the full inclusion of all people in the church and in society, whatever our genders or sexual orientations. Every body matters.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Good Grief

Good Grief

When I visit a family to prepare for their loved one’s funeral, I advise them: Take extra care of yourself because you’re not all here. Part of you has died and gone with your loved one. So give yourself extra time and space, eat healthy, drink water, exercise, and tell people how they can be most helpful to you—just as you've helped them in the past.

Grief opens you to a myriad of emotions, and the thing about emotions is that they just are. Emotions aren't good or bad, right or wrong; they may feel comfortable or uncomfortable, and you might wonder why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, but don’t worry about it. Feel your feelings, and do healthy things to express them: write about them, play music, talk about them with someone you trust, cry, laugh, scream into a pillow, whatever it takes.

Grief affects each of us differently. There’s not too short or too long of a grief process; you move through grief at your own pace. But you have to move through your grief; you can’t go around it in an attempt to avoid it or else it will manifest itself in illness or depression.

The funeral serves as a threshold through which you step from the initial stage of shock and private grief to the stage of publicly acknowledging your grief and receiving support from others. You have to go through your own grief process, but you are not alone. Know that people are thinking of you and holding you in prayer.

Over time you will develop a new relationship with your loved one who has died. It will be different from the relationship you had with them when they were living, and the new different relationship is up to you. There may be things you want to say or express to your loved one; feel free. But don’t be surprised—seriously—if you sense a response. Take signs for what they are: signs. Every sign contains an element of truth, but not all signs are pointed in the right direction.

Eventually your whole self will come together and you’ll find yourself all here. Things won’t be like they were—they never are, thank God. As the poet Rita Dove says, It’s not the end of the world—just the world as you know it.

On the Hallowed Eve of All Saints' Day

On the Hallowed Eve of All Saints’ Day

I have just returned from the funeral for one of my neighbors (who I describe in the January 12, 2013, blog article). I want to be a saint like her.

One day, a couple years after we had moved to Scotland, two Glasgow police officers came to our door to ask if we had heard or seen anything connected to the mugging of a person in our street. The person was an elderly neighbor woman; another woman had snatched her handbag and then fled in a car driven by a man.

My neighbor—the one who just died—and I each reached out to the woman who was mugged, and that’s how we met. Soon afterwards my neighbor invited the two of us to tea, and since then I have enjoyed many afternoon visits with my neighbor. She welcomed around her dining room table Catholics, Protestants, Episcopalians, and those who don’t practice a faith. She engaged us all—young and old, Scottish and American, traditional and feminist—in hardy discussions about current events, local history, and our personal histories.

Tea just with my neighbor always left me feeling special and upbeat. She was a great conversationalist and would ask after my parents and my church and my life. In my line of work it’s considered professionally appropriate to listen to other people and talk about their stuff rather than my own stuff. Thus I relished having a neighbor who actually wanted to listen to me talk about my stuff, as well as tell me about her stuff.

My neighbor’s front yard was a Garden of Eden. It reflected the seasons of creation, from hibernating bulbs in the winter to crocuses sprouting up in the early spring followed by bright red tulips and potted geraniums and a whole host of colors and textures throughout the summer. Even her weeds were beautiful. In late summer and autumn she and I would exchange fruit from our gardens, and I remember her giving me a flat box lined with a soft cloth filled with carefully-arranged ripe plums, for which she got bags of apples from our tree.

One year, when I stopped to smell the fragrant blossoms of the lilac tree near her front wall, I mentioned to my neighbor that I used to have a lilac bush in my yard in Minneapolis and missed it. That autumn she gave me two cuttings from her lilac tree, one of which took root and is now in our back garden, planted so I can see it from the window of my study—where I am writing this. Even though my tree is still too young to produce blossoms, each year its leaves bud, turn bright green, then change to brown and fall off, just like the mature apple tree near it. It’s only waist high but it’s living life as a tree to the fullest.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Knobby Knees



Knobby Knees

At the age of 17 I was tall, gangly, and loud—and to compensate for these socially-inhibiting attributes I poured myself into the hardest classes in high school: Advanced Placement History and English, Calculus, Latin, and Physics. My one “fun” class was Band (which I describe in the September 15, 2012, blog article) but it too required extreme effort.

My operating philosophy during adolescence was, If I can’t be popular I’ll be smart. If boys weren’t going to like me—they not only called me “Biddle” but used it as a four-letter word—then they could lump it in the classroom, and I took great pleasure in outscoring them and wrecking the grading curve (see the February 28, 2013, blog article).

Which is all to say, I suffered poor self-esteem as a teenager and thus put my hope into going to Davidson College where I trusted my brains, if not my body, would be appreciated. After all the motto of Davidson is Alenda lux ubi ortas libertas: “Let learning be cherished where liberty has arisen.”

Both my grandfather and my father had gone to Davidson, and I had grown up visiting the campus whenever my family vacationed in North Carolina. In the spring of my junior year in high school I visited the college as a prospective student and had my interview with the admissions office.

In the summer before my final high school year I was invited to a social event for prospective students in the Nashville, Tennessee, area. It was hosted by a Davidson student at the home of another Davidson student, and the college president, Sam Spencer, was there to greet us.

My dad and I happened to be the first ones to arrive and we joined Dr. Spencer in the living room. I sat on one sofa facing Dr. Spencer and my father on the opposite sofa. I was wearing a pleated skirt, made from the Lindsay-clan tartan, which came down to just below my knobby knees, per the style in those days. When I sat down the skirt’s hem touched the tops of my knees that—being knobby—did not touch one another.

I will always remember Dad saying to me in Dr. Spencer’s presence, “Put your knees together.” As though I was flashing the president of my future alma mater!

But I also remember Dr. Spencer giving me a knowing look that said, “Don’t worry; you’re fine. This is just your father being a father.”

Sam Spencer led Davidson College to admit female students in the early 1970’s, over and against patriarchal myths (such as, female students would bring down Davidson’s academic reputation), sexist opinions (like, the college’s electricity costs would increase from the use of hairdryers and other feminine appliances), and downright misogyny, including anti-women attitudes held by at least one female professor. A member of the Class of 1940 and an honorary member of my class, the Class of 1983—the last graduating class he presided over before retiring and the tenth graduating class with women in it—he died Wednesday, October 16, 2013, aged 94.

Living on campus as President and Mrs. Spencer did, I imagine Dr. Spencer saw a lot of skirts and shorts shorter than mine. Whatever we students wore—or didn’t wear—Sam Spencer gave each one of us the message, “Don’t worry; you’re fine—just the way you are.”