BEING IN THE YARD

Chimes taught me

How to

Never sing the same

Song twice.

What We Come Up With

I mean, I have to wonder what it would do to simply have a seat in your very comfortable counseling office and sit down for a few minutes to speak to everyone about some things you think would be fairly helpful for everyone.

I suppose it could be interesting.

If you did, where would you start?

Well that's easy, I would start by telling them to allow the counselor within to attend to whatever is alive inside of them… Just to listen very quietly and gently…

To watch tenderly whatever imagery arises… As they breathe and settle in to their bodies.

Sadly, quite often folks will be working with enemy imagery, something someone said or did that stimulated discomfort.

I invite them to think back to a phrase or word that was said. Then back to the breathing… To feel it in the body and notice quietly whatever happens inside.

From there maybe I'd invite them to try to name some feelings. What might sensations in the body be pointing to emotionally, what feelings are present? Then we'd moved on to – thoughts that they notice our splashing to the surface – they could say "These are my thoughts – this is the movie that's playing inside my head" whenever they return to the trigger (what was said or done, what a cell phone could record.)

As they disentangle thoughts and feelings, I might invite them to pay attention to the real basic human desire or longing that seems to be charging or giving life to them. Behind or beneath all of the different strategies and ideas one might be coming up with to solve or fix the problem or the other person, what is it that YOU are really wanting at a soul level?

As soon as one is able to name that longing (not a specific strategy or specific proposal) they will begin enacting a reopening of themselves to bring that very value out into the world through free choosing. Quite often this new burst of energy ends up flourishing into some sort of creative contribution or a request of oneself to try to be and move and live in a new way because it's freedom for them, and fullness; much more than they had before.

I'm Listening to Kitaro

Lying face down in the grass
which is still wet with rain. It is
even more green up close. Weeds

have gone to seed all over so
there are birds everywhere nestled
around me. Feeding. Nourishing

While they dream. They took trees
down, one older than your great-grandfather, three houses past ours, on
this street of sorrows. Its enormous

Life is over. I smelled sawdust pasty
on the asphalt, fallen down into cool
brazen veins.

The damp still held the smoke, echoed
the daylong grinding down, the secret
burning edges. The teeth of steel.

Now again the storm relents, they
return to feast, to tweet, to turn me
to my back, my dreams one day

of becoming a tree.

GOOD FRIDAY

GOOD FRIDAY

April 19, 2019


by Randy Smit


Always look on the bright side of life.

- Monty Python's Flying Circus



Gray skies, raindrops. Perfect.


On a cross, of course, one can

Still never be found without options.

Haven't the Masters taught us, "Despite

Whatever is happening, we always have choice."

Without a wink we can think and feel and say and pray whatever

We want. To the liberated, death is a hiccup found between

Two unending sighs of freedom. Take that


To heart and

I'll bet you soon have a list of your own

To take to your next crucifixion. Sometimes

Over the noisy din of the pounding nails or

the God blessed scoffers in my ears,

[Insert mocking those mocking here] at

times like these, like so many other journeymen healers,

I'll ask my personal care attendant to quietly unfold

The wrinkled scrap paper on which I was lucky enough

To scratch down a list of these few beauts

for those most ferocious moments, the God

damned ones, the Oh, the hell on earth of it! ones…




Emigrate.



Never leave home.



Think of what's her name… no really,

Remember that one and that other one and that other one



Recall the bile! Again and again and Vomit straight into your enemies eyes and crush the skulls of their infants – AS SOME ONCE SUGGESTED – and

Scream your fool head off for someone, for Christ sake to take you down and stop the bleeding and cover you with a blanket!

[Insert tears here.]


Be the pain. Hold its hand. Kiss its cheeks.

Serve it up a velvety bourbon at a blues bar on a lonely Friday night… Yeah, with a cigarette.



Invite it back for the holiday to meet your folks. Make it a

casserole and be sure to share plenty with the starving schmucks on either side of you.



Savor the wisdom you had the day you finally decided to

skip driving out into the cold drizzle to find the perfect $10 card

at the Family bookstore.


Make the world your family. Eat

with them, help them to the restroom, watch their kids and play

without ceasing, grab them some groceries, tell your

own dear kin we can, yes we can – and that us against the world is

against the world and that's not us, not ever.


On the cross, at the worst

Dissolve into light and fluid and feathered and holy.


Notice the perfect.

Adore the gray skies,

Love all the raindrops.

IT'S POETRY MONTH

It's time to listen to the moss in the backyard beneath the maple tree without its leaves as yet but snow flurries just yesterday two days after 60s, go figure.

We have Sonny, my favorite Labrador nephew while my brother and his kids are down with mom and dad in Florida of course where it's warm and in the 80s. But seriously I hope they have fun.

It is time to see if Michigan State can make the final four and to finally try the instant pot we opened back at Christmas, no I am not kidding. I think we're trying porkchops first.

It is indeed time to get out paper and pencil and sketch new worlds with words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs of reason and folly and feverish intensity or grotesque, minuscule preoccupation or the inane, the ever vague and vacant monosyllabic

Whah? Huh?

Who? Wha?

Huh? Whah?

And then you go eat dinner and think "Yummy, and it's poetry month!"

BEACH BADGE

CAREFUL, PLEASE or HELP WANTED

"You shall no longer be called forsaken…"

Isaiah 62:4

Would you call Holland a caring community? There are people today working all over our town. They bathe and bathroom and dress and feed our grandparents and great uncles and aunts who are too weak or disoriented to do this for themselves. And most of them have to do it in a great big hurry.

"Thank God they're here" we might say to ourselves, passing by one of our neighborhoods facilities, perhaps noticing again the help wanted signs, wondering if we might ever find ourselves living there someday should our own families be unable to care for us.

No, most folks if they are honest would say it's no one's first choice. Still, our area nursing homes and assisted living centers make possible a certain quality of living for thousands in our community.

Or do they?

Meet Grace: A woman in her early 30's whose found her calling and has cared for many elderly individuals, most of whom were disabled to the point of needing consistent daily care. To an interview last winter she brought experience from group homes in the greater Grand Rapids area in hopes of better pay and benefits for a kind of work she realized could be challenging but also very rewarding. A care facility here in Holland promised a fairly competitive hourly rate ($18 per hour, with prior experience,) insurance and a benefits package (including 401(k).) It also painted the vision of a work environment that reflected the values of equity and fairness among staff members and a conscientious scrutiny of quality care through shared accountability.

"Given what I'd had before I was actually drawn to the pay and benefits," she mentioned in our recent interview. "But I also thought I'd get to know some of my patients, learn their names and needs. It's the relationships that you can build that makes this challenging work worth doing. Caring for people takes time."

Instead, from day one, she witnessed the cacophony of "buzzing call-lights" she was responsible to answer, behind each one an individual in need of restroom care or, in some of the worst instances, someone who'd fallen or become injured in an attempt to care for themselves after a "too - long" wait for assistance. "I worked there only three weeks and they were critically shortstaffed the entire time," she said. The worst of it, she went on to narrate, was an evening when yet another of her counterparts had called in sick (a routine from the outset) leaving her to scramble between as many as 48 patients over a 12 hour period without any support. "It was horrible" she said.

Still, it was the callousness and apathy of some of her counterparts on staff that was the hardest to swallow. The individuals she worked with were gruff and impolite, seemingly disconnected from who they were handling and "why they were there in the first place." On some occasions older attendants would even discourage Alzheimer’s patients from taking necessary showers which were otherwise mandated unless a resident requested a pass. Grace's manager, after hearing her complaints, offered her a shift or two at a "lighter-care" building, but that soon ended. Despite feeling much empathy for her sometimes overwhelmed manager, here again, it was the complacency and sense of fatalism that led Grace to move on to other employment.

She left with feelings of abandonment and profound guilt. To this day she drives to work another way so she doesn't have to be reminded of what happened there that night and what still might be going on.

Without too much effort most of us can imagine what it would feel like as an older person, the disabilities accruing with demands for a slower pace to accommodate aches and pains that naturally attend each of our bodies in late life. With paperthin skin of our own, we can see ourselves being rushed through the bathroom, led impatiently by the arm or forced out of bed to handle what are often called "dailies" with only as much as 15 minutes to shower and groom and dress.

On the other hand, many who offer care for loved ones of their own can empathize with overloaded care attendants. Communicating with people who have dementia or Alzheimer's can make it difficult to form bonds of mutual trust and understanding. Perhaps many could see how easy it would be to begin by first fearing we might hurt someone, only to watch that more compassionate response slowly diminish to a more a-pathic posture where bumps and scrapes and frightening long waits just "come with the territory."

So what should WE do? If we are a caring community, how does that take shape? What does it look like? We hear terrible stories like this from time to time, don't we? What does that alone suggest about our culture and our priorities?

Should we recommend that families keep a closer eye on grandpa and hold managers more accountable? Yes. Should we suggest a call to the ombudsman or other local officials who govern and police underfunctioning facilities? Yes. Should we thank and encourage hospitals nearby for their continued efforts to make sure the worst cases are investigated? Yes, indeed.

Either way, it seems important to stop and listen to stories like these. Let them affect us, even trouble our hearts. Just a few years ago many remember Holland being touted as one of the happiest cities in the country, and goodness gracious how many churches do these people need? Caring for the vulnerable and the elderly has been a challenge for human beings as long as there have been human beings. Many of the religious in our town, of which I am but one, could tell you how serious the prophets and Jesus were about remembering them in all their frailty and forgottenness.

In fact, during his time he was no fundraiser encouraging the building up of bigger churches and seminaries. Jesus washed their feet. It's good work.

At the close of the first month of a brand-new year, are there new partnerships that could be explored? What efforts already exist among churches and community organizations whose voices could further be amplified? Could area colleges and vocational training agencies be further supported as they promote viable opportunities for qualified young people thus meeting the basic needs of our cherished elders and friends? After all, do we not belong to God and also to each other?

Rev. Randy Smit is a pastor, writer and founder of Compassionate Connection, a ministry of Hope Church, RCA. https://www.facebook.com/Compassionate-Connection-Ministry-505409932889624/. He and his wife Jill live in Holland.