Happy Ending

Happy Ending

Wednesday night right before 11 p.m. our house was broken into by someone—or someones, as we don’t know how many. We were in bed asleep when we heard a loud bang, followed by more banging. As soon as we realized the door was being smashed, I called 999 and was put straight through to the police while my partner started yelling down the stairs to try to warn off the intruder(s).

My partner, who used to be a volunteer fire fighter, had the presence of mind to post a message on the internet letting folks far and near know we were being burgled—only in his haste he typed, “There are burgers in the house.” Thankfully there was no bodily harm, and we were able to clean up the shattered glass and replace the contents of our stolen wallets with relative ease. The burglar(s) managed to steal a total of ten pounds sterling (about sixteen U.S. dollars), enough for a couple Happy Meals.

“They say” we humans learn by hearing, seeing, or doing. While most people employ all three to some degree, each of us relies primarily on one over the other two. In general males learn mainly by doing—giving credence to the stereotypes of not asking for directions or reading instructions. Females predominantly learn by hearing—perhaps because literacy and autonomous action have long since been denied us, and we’ve had to rely on “gossip” and oral forms of communication to impart wisdom and knowledge.

Speaking for myself, that horrible crashing noise—my first thought was that a vehicle had rammed into something on our street—is one sound I do not ever want to hear again. But even though we were victims of a crime, we were not left to feel victimized thanks to the verbal support and sympathy that was backed up by visual commitment and vigorous action.

From the second I phoned the police—the break-in was happening as we spoke—until I said good-bye—only after a uniformed officer ran up the stairs with a police dog to check things out—the dispatcher’s clear, calm tone helped us to focus on what was happening and to keep safe. She remained on the line with me, asking critical questions (Where are you? Where are the intruders? What’s the lay-out of your house?) and giving vital instructions (Stay upstairs. Open a window and watch for the police who are on their way.)

When I went downstairs, I was met by a female officer who asked me if I was okay and would I like a cup of tea. I poured myself a glass of milk and my partner got a little whisky to settle our nerves. We began to express to the police what had happened. Neither one of us saw the intruder(s), who left before the police arrived, and part of me is relieved not to know what they or he—everyone assumes the perpetrator(s) was male—looked like. The police asked us to point out what the intruder(s) had done: kitchen cupboard doors were left ajar (looking for a cookie jar with money in it?), a dining room closet door was opened (revealing the boiler and a stash of crackers and corn chips), and muddy footprints were left on a bathroom mat (which got washed as soon as the forensics official had dusted for fingerprints).

That night one officer took a statement from my partner in the living room while another officer took my statement in the study. The ability to converse—to hear myself answer who, what, where, when, and how (we’ll probably never know why)—was, I realize as I write this, a key step in recovering from the shock of the situation. And receiving from the officers concrete assurances (a carpenter would arrive soon to board up the broken door, and a forensics official would come in the morning to dust for fingerprints) enabled us eventually to get some rest.

While waiting for the carpenter to arrive in the wee hours I phoned my mother, six time zones away, and relayed what had just transpired. Hearing her familiar voice brought comfort, and then listening to her describe what she was fixing for dinner made me laugh—which was a huge relief. Afterward I took the opportunity to type up the basic facts about our break-in and print them on half-sheets of paper addressed to “Dear Neighbour.” Doing this helped check my adrenaline, but more importantly, it allowed me to take my own statement and thus take back some control of an uncontrollable event.

At 8 a.m. two different officers visited us before going door-to-door to alert residents in the area. We gave them our story and I showed them my leaflet. Over the course of the day, as we spoke to more and more people, our narrative unfolded. It became less about details, immediate and in the present tense, and more about drama, as last night’s actions became past-tense and we added our hindsights and hearsays and to-do’s.

One to-do was to thank the Glasgow Police officers and personnel, each of whom responded magnificently to us during and following our traumatic moment. In our letter of gratitude we again told the tale, beginning with the dispatcher, the officers who arrived on the scene within minutes, those who stayed to take our statements and patrol the area, the carpenter, the forensics official, and the two officers who worked on our case the whole next day. Lo and behold, they returned to our house at 5 p.m. with my stolen backpack, fanny pack, and wallet, with all the contents still intact. A good citizen had spotted the bags in a backyard and reported them to the police. We very much appreciate that it ended up being a long night and a long day for the police. For us it made for a happy ending.

Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday

Mother’s Day in the United States is said to have started after the Civil War in the 1860’s as a peace movement by women in the South and in the North who were tired of sons dying in battle. It was eventually set as the second Sunday in May.

Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom is much older and part of the church calendar; it always falls on the middle Sunday in Lent, which means paying attention to the weekends in March.

In both countries this event has been taken over by the greeting-card and floral industries. I recall giving my mother gifts on Mother’s Day—usually something I had made in school, like perfumed soap decorated with ribbons and pearl stick pins, or flowers made out of colored tissues and pipe cleaners. When I was in the 5th grade, a five-and-dime store opened near our house in Starkville, Mississippi—which was a big deal because the main street shops were too far to walk to alone—and I went to get something nice for my mother that was within the budget of my weekly quarter allowance. Only I managed to break the item I was considering buying—I forget what it was—and an employee escorted me out of the store. I ran home in tears and poured out my guilt to my mother, who proceeded to walk me back to the store to apologize and pay (surely with her help) for the damage.

Seminary taught me that Mother’s Day is not a loving occasion for everyone. Some people mourn not knowing a mother, while other folks deal with being neglected or abused by their mother. As a minister I pray on Mother’s Day and on Father’s Day for everyone who serves as a caring parent or a faithful guardian or a trusted mentor.

Then there are those of us who wanted to be mothers but it didn’t happen. For me, Mother’s Day was for many years a day to ignore for being ignored. Like barren women in the Bible I felt forgotten by God. Left out. Abandoned. Made to bear emptiness and bitterness and pain. Pain that punched me in the stomach every time I saw a school bus or was invited to a baby shower or heard children playing or read in the news about another abused child or watched other people’s kids pass milestones.

And wouldn’t you know it, the one stage of my life when I tried to get pregnant and, failing that, went through fertility treatment, I was serving the one congregation in my ministerial career that was brimming with young families. Every month somebody would announce during worship they were expecting, and I would endure, privately, my period again.

We considered adoption, first in Minnesota and soon after moving here to Scotland ten years ago, but learned that as non-U.K. citizens we were ineligible.

Then in March 2004 we were spending the night at a guest house along Loch Lomond, taking a break from house-painting and pastoring. Once again my anxiety and despair about being childless woke me up. Only this time I got up, got dressed, and went outside to have it out with God. I stood beside the lapping water and looked up at the clear dark sky filled with stars and said, “God, you gave me these maternal urges. You either satisfy them, or I’m giving them back to you. For good.”

Wouldn’t you know it, it was Mothering Sunday.

Since then I’ve made peace with myself. And with God. I still get angry when someone over here asks me, “Do you have family?” As though I could be an alien from a lonely planet. What they mean is, do I have children? But rather than answer in the negative, I answer in the positive: I have a partner and three wonderful stepchildren and their partners and three grandsons, and my mom who lives near my brother and my sister-in-law and my two nephews. Thank you very much.

Rape Dreams

Rape Dreams

I once heard a sexologist—now there’s an occupation to write down on your immigration form—explain why people dream about being raped. I was 34 years old and listening to the radio as I drove to a sex therapy appointment, which for any of you prurient readers was very similar to other enlightening counseling sessions I have benefited from only it focused on my non-existent sex life.

This sex expert was being interviewed on public radio, and she said that rape dreams are the psyche’s way of making us jump through hoops in order to experience pleasure. We can’t just enjoy the moment, or the climax; we have to pass through shame and guilt and whatever other uncomfortable emotions our subconscious throws up at us.

Interesting, I recall thinking at the time, especially given that I had never had a rape dream, or at least not one that I remembered. Which might have indicated how repressed I was.

Coming to terms with things, like sexuality and such, in my mid-30’s had its benefits. I was tired enough of wading through my genetically-inherited anxiety, which doesn’t just run in my family—it races. I simply vowed to myself then and there not to feel guilty about God’s gift of sexuality. Never have since, and never will.

Augustine, the one who fulfilled the adage, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future,” would’ve made a prime candidate for sex therapy. As it happens he never worked through his shame or guilt. After abandoning his partner of many years and the child they had together, he plagued Christendom with a recurring nightmare: the Doctrine of Original Sin, which he attributed to females—the sin, that is, not the doctrine. The doctrine is 100% man-made.

Providentially, these days there’s a helpful 12-step organization for people such as Augustine who find themselves addicted to sex or obsessed with sexual issues. Like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, its full name is Sex-addicts Anonymous. But there’s still so much stigma attached to sexuality that many SA groups publicize their meetings as a gathering of “the Saint Augustine society.”

If we need hoops to jump through, let it be these:

Serenity to accept the fact of life that our sexuality is a gift from God.

Courage to change any unhealthy attitudes about our God-given, uniquely-made, widely-varied human bodies, sexual orientations, recreational practices, and means of biological reproduction.

Wisdom to seek professional help when we’re tired of the same old bad dreams.

Annual Christmas Card Results

Annual Christmas Card Results

Christmas 2013 delivered 58 cards to our house, not including family photos and letters. Several couples of friends took this season to announce their marriages—after years or decades of living together in faithful, committed relationships—made possible by an increasing number of states in the good ole U.S. of A. legalizing same-gender marriage.

This year secular cards (34) outnumbered religiously-themed cards (24). Only one robin—usually ubiquitous here in Britain—slipped through our letter box. Also down were cards displaying dogs or cats or both, while deer increased. Just two Santas showed up; one was riding a bicycle, which along with several other biking illustrations paid homage to our general mode of transportation. There was a thin smattering of Christmas trees, red post boxes, snowscapes, snow people, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and various seasonal greetings, including “God Jul” from friends in Norway. But topping the secular batch was a 1920’s flapper wishing us “Merry Christmas” from none other than a Church of Scotland Elder.

Less than a dozen cards had any glitter, and only two of them were religious: a snow angel, and a church in some woods with its windows lit up for Christmas Eve and a horse-drawn sleigh approaching. Real-world churches included the Lincoln Cathedral, down south in England, and the First United Methodist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana, also down south.

Among the religious cards, several don’t pass the scriptural litmus test: one card—from a Presbyterian minister no less—specifically mentions “innkeepers,” and that one and three others contain “stables.” (See the November 26, 2012, blog article, “The house where Jesus was born.”) Four cards portray the Holy Family as white Northern Europeans, while only two of the four sets of magi—all non-Biblically trios—are persons of color. The true colors are the other way around: The Holy Family is dark-skinned (like in traditional Orthodox icons) with Middle-Eastern features, and the “foreigners” are, say, Japanese Buddhists, Korean Methodists, Nigerian Catholics, Pakistani Muslims, Californian New-Agers, and British Humanists.

Every card depicts an image, and sometimes the artist gets her or his due credit. A colorful collage of the wise people “Bearing Gifts” by Barbara Prout adorns a card, the proceeds of which support WaterAid, “a charity working with some of the poorest people in Africa and Asia to improve their own water supplies and sanitation, using practical and low cost technologies.”

Rainbow-colored angels fill the outside and inside of a card produced by Minnesota artist Kevyn K. Riley, one of many cards printed with vegetable-base ink. Among the deer cards from dear friends is a print of an Illauliutit (Caribou Herd) by Meelia Kelly, an Inuit artist in Canada. And a tandem-bike-riding couple sending us best wishes for Christmas and the New Year is from an original painting by Josef Habeler, Mouth Painter, and produced by Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, based in London.

While the number of cards received this year is significantly down from past years, the number of charities supported by the purchase of these cards is way up, including Barbardo’s, “helping change children’s lives”; The British Kidney Patient Association, “improving life for kidney patients”; Cancer Research UK; Focus Ireland, “creating homes together”; The Leprosy Mission, which “seeks to provide medical care, community-based rehabilitation and employment for people affected by leprosy and other disabilities”; Macmillan Cancer Support; The Marie Keating Foundation, “making cancer less frightening by enlightening”; The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, “saving lives since 1824”; Shelter, a housing charity in the UK; the Woodland Trust, which conserves forests in the UK; and Save the Children and other charitable organizations to help children. One particular card—portraying ethnically-authentic shepherds, although the sheep appear suspiciously white-washed—is jointly produced by 31 different charities.

Several cards issue alerts as well as glad tidings. On the back of one card it says, “Warning: This card is not a toy and is unsuitable for children under 36 months. Contains small parts.” Yet on the front is an Edwardian snow scene featuring a Post Office vehicle driving dangerously close to a boy on a bicycle who is not wearing a helmet.

Another sparkling design offering “Christmas Wishes” stipulates: “WARNING! Not suitable for small children under 36 months due to small parts. Please retain for future reference.” I am never throwing away this card.

Finally, Perfect Moments produces a card “to someone special at Christmas” that states on the back—in rather small print—“Warning: This product is not a toy. Not suitable for under three years unless supervised, due to small parts and/or sharp points which may constitute a choking hazard and/or risk of laceration.” I’ll make sure I’m properly supervised and wearing a face mask and rubber gloves if I recycle this card anytime within the next three years.

A man walks into a nail salon

A man walks into a nail salon

A man walks into a nail salon. He’s in his 80’s, is legally blind, and shares a house with one of his children in my parish area of Glasgow.

This man has long since retired as an engineer. His career started in the early years of the Second World War, and his job was on the list of reserved occupations. But later in the war he was called up for active service in the air force, and he was given the choice of either training for six months to become a pilot or six weeks to become a gun operator on a bomber plane. Young and eager to get going, he chose the latter—although he told me he wished he had learned to fly because then after the war he could have secured a well-paying job as a civilian airline pilot. Instead he stayed on the ground, or rather underneath it as a mine surveyor.

Now a widower with great-grandchildren, this man is pretty self-sufficient given his age and visual impairment. He takes care of most things around the house whenever his son is away on business, and he gets help for the few things he can’t see to do by himself.

One of the tasks he needs assistance with but doesn’t want to bother his children about is cutting his nails. And so he goes to a nail salon.

The first nail salon he went into, years ago, he noticed all the other clients were women. So he asked the receptionist, a young Korean man, if they did men’s nails. The receptionist assured him that they did and after giving him a seat proceeded to trim his nails and buff them.

The man then saw an older gentleman come out from the back of the salon and speak to the young man in a loud authoritarian voice. The man didn’t have a clue as to what was being said because they were speaking what he assumed was Korean. But he realized the older gentleman was the young mans’ father and clearly adamant about something, something involving the son who had just finished doing the man’s nails.

The man figured he was not supposed to be in this place after all and got up to pay for his nail job before leaving. When he went to the reception counter, the young man said to him, “There is no charge. Elderly people do not pay.”

The man has been going there to have his nails done ever since. He’s never paid any money, but each time he walks into that nail salon he brings a container of chocolate or cookies for the staff to enjoy on their tea breaks.