Porch Faith

Image by Greg Waskovich from Pixabay

One of the latest pandemic crazes: Porch Portraits.

People step outside their homes to pose. Photographers, keeping social distance, take photos.

Check out a Virginia photographer’s example of this phenomenon on her Facebook group titled, “Porch photography: In it together.”

The trend inspires my grief-stricken heart to recall a favorite memory flick that launches with my daughter’s high-pitched song wafting from the shower. My then-husband’s eyes, still sound, meet my gaze as he dashes into my office. He points towards the hallway bathroom and whispers with an affectionate smile, “Listen. Listen to her sing.”

I nod knowingly. Simultaneously, I see my son relinquish his video game in the adjacent playroom and breathe in his sister’s song, so pure and familiar, but still remarkable like the first scents of spring.

Porch Portraits!

Image by MR1313 from Pixabay

Fifteen years ago before the catastrophic events happened in my household and long before Covid-19 screeched the brakes on the world, I wish a local photographer appeared on our front steps and beckoned us outdoors. We would at first reluctantly, but soon enough, drop the mundane tasks, scramble outside, only to huddle together.

I imagine my daughter posing in the middle of the portrait as she wears her father’s bulky robe and a towel twists over her drying wet hair like an giant-sized ceramic vase about to fall straight over. My son perches next to my daughter. Both children cuddle one cat each under the watchful guise of us parents behind them on the porch.

Cheese!

Unbridled family faith is as unmistakable as are our cheesy smiles.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Photos freeze moments that are, in actuality, fleeting even while the camera snaps. As time vanishes, so do family dynamics. The raw reality is that eventually everyone captured in every single photograph will, whether days or decades later, die one day. In the interim, there is a security in tricking ourselves to believe everyone and everything is like a photo and cemented with lifetime guarantees.

Today, I can only wish I had a porch portrait, so utterly profound in its sense of ordinary, to remind me of how faith, firm and sturdy, feels, and how my faith journey is now so far removed from those invigorating days that felt like standing in a heavy rain shower that inspires you to sing it loud and sing it free without realizing anyone is in earshot.

 

Faith Muscle

 

Am I in the Right Room?

One grieving mom to another:

I just wait.
I know.
So do I.
I wonder what we’re waiting for?
Something.

The excerpt above is from a fellow blogger’s comments on one of my previous posts. It inspires further reflection.

What is this something? What do I wait for?

Image by ravensong7 from Pixabay

Five months, two days ago, I COULDN’T WAIT to rip into the day, regardless of life’s circumstances. I leaped out of bed like a child who had no patience to discover what was inside the gift box under the Christmas tree. It sounds corny, but everyday was Christmas. Twenty-four hour segments flew by, and I darted behind each day as if I was trying to catch up to an Olympian runner.

Now, five months, two days later, I feel like I’ve been dumped into one of life’s empty waiting rooms without a clock on the wall. So, I wait. What do I wait for? The day I reunite with my son?

My mom used to say, “Day after day after day, ‘til the last day.”

Has that aphorism become my epic battle song that I sing now during the darkest chapter of my life until I arrive at the end of the book? Then what? I close the book, and a trumpet thunders and signals my long aWAITed reunion with my son.

“You’ve arrived!” In my imagination, I hear Alexa’s voice as an angel proclaiming the news.

Or, do I just wait for my son’s toothy white grin to be on the other side of the front door’s window? I expect to catch a glimpse of his eager face ready to enter what was once his home. I grow more impatient than ever since that youthful, solid and towering presence once crowned my world like the North Star and kept me from getting lost.

When my mom lost her oldest son she told me she always thought he was outside sitting on his favorite chair on the front porch. Numerous times, she found herself calling out to him. Of course, the front porch remained quiet and empty.

Admittedly, when no one is home I beckon in a familiar tone, “Marshall! Marshall!”

I wait and wait. In the deafening silence, I catch the familiarity of the maple tree’s drooping branches outside the exterior door’s window. Like the maple, everything has changed, but I remain standing.

As others await the end of this pandemic so they can return to their ordinary lives and do things like reset goals and “arrive” at new careers and new milestones in life, I have arrived in the waiting room of life before and during the pandemic. Going forward, I believe, this is my last stop. Fortunately, the space is not noisy and crowded. It’s not stressful. I am not afraid. I crave nothing.

Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s profound words frame the room, “This is it.”

So, that’s it. Waiting. The question is, does faith live here?

Image by Mylene2401 from Pixabay

Maybe the answer lies deeper in the same grieving mom’s additional comments on my post:

I am not going to say anything,
about how beautiful your son is,
and his mother.
Love to both of you.

Speechless, there is no response to those words because they are the words of hope, and their beauty cannot be contained under gift wrap. Subsequently, without faith, there can be no hope. Sometimes in the crux of waiting is the crux of our search. This is it.

Faith Muscle

Abracadabra Prayers

Abracadabra!

I will you give you a powerful prayer to create magical results in your life:

Name your intention:

• Prosperity
• Health
• Employment
• New Love
• Friendship
• Improve Personal Relationships

Once, 4 months, 26 days ago specifically, my life was based on prayer formulas. Without fail, I prayed a host of specific intentions to God. For urgent matters, I assigned a particular job to a particular saint to intercede. Eagerly, faithfully and patiently I waited for my prayers to unfold. My prayers were clay. God was the sculptor.

I witnessed masterpiece miracles. God’s handiwork studio space was divided in three sections.

1. Work-in-progress prayers (For instance, a friend narrowing in on a new job!)
2. God’s handiwork creations. (Houses spared from foreclosures. Jobs landed. Lonely singles finding mates, and so on.)
3. Dry clay. You get the pic with that image, but, remember, if you sprinkle water, you can give dry clay life again. Right? So, hope underscored this section.

Reflecting back, section 2, God’s handiwork creations, consumed anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of the studio space. I was deliriously happy living in this studio. Faith beautifully wallpapered every turn and corner. Faith-filled tile fell beneath my feet like lemon drops, and life was magical.

And then one frightful Tuesday arrived, and the studio had to accommodate a new area: Bone Dry Clay. Undeserved. Unwanted. The section has no number. No prayers answered here.

In this dark dungeon, there is no God of anyone’s understanding to whom I can turn and beseech to awaken my son, if only long enough to see, his long, slim fingers with clean nails that formed hands that created magical mechanical parts. There is no expert saint to intercede who will nudge a supreme being who’s napping, and doesn’t realize that my 26-year-old son had a lot of work to finish in this life before his exit.

Now, this bone dry, nameless area, takes up the studio space now. There is no hope for any kind of sculpture, never mind a masterpiece. Sadly, I think faith means hope, and hope does not live between these walls.

So, I am left with no prayer, never mind powerful or magical. My faith is tested, and I have no faith at this moment. Or perhaps, for now, I am on a pause in my faith journey. Paused in the faith library researching things like prayer.

If my prayers are answered, am I worthy of the outcome? If my prayer petitions fall on deaf ears, am I unworthy? Or are prayer requests just a masquerade for magic? And if this is true, maybe the faithful have no prayers in need of answers since if you are faithful, you accept everything all the time, even the unacceptable, the unbearable, the noncomprehending. Maybe, you don’t mess around with God’s handiwork. Maybe you surrender your superhuman costume and just become an objective observer as the sculpture unfolds.

Do you pray? Why do you pray? Do you pray for certain things? Do you pray in general terms? Do you think prayers are magic? Do prayers help you, and if they do, what kind of prayers do you pray?

Faith Muscle

Faith Fotos

Living in a new normal, I am still alive on this journey by flying on the wings of a small, select tribe. They hold me up when my legs turn to rubber. They stand firmly beside me despite the days when my words are thunderous and moods storm. When I am surrounded by dark, they are my light switch.

They infuse me with oxygen and hope. Faith has been called “the substance of hope,” and that is what my tribe extends to me the most.

In those first futile days, days after my world turned pitch black, my friend sister Anne, an amazing photographer, sent me the most glorious photographs that looked so polar opposite to the despair I was experiencing. As it turned out, they were part of my faith-fabric that sewed my unraveling world together.

 

Photo Credit: Anne Yoken

Photo Credit: Anne Yoken

 

“The sun always rises no matter how dark the night.” This is what my friend sister wrote along with her photos.

So far, the sun has risen. Ironically, the brightest, reddish, orangey sunrise (and the only one I was up early enough to witness) was the morning we buried my son. I still picture its splendor and wonder if underneath its robust spirited color, one could unearth a stairway to heaven.

Photo Credit: Anne Yoken

 

Faith Muscle