Tag: Mother’s Day

And Then…

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Music, Photography, springLeave a comment

balsamroot ch rs

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out where my emotions are coming from. I agree with people who say we ought not to be led by emotions, but I don’t discount them. God created us with emotion for a reason. Jesus demonstrated a full range of emotional experience, and demonstrated their rightful place. Like the Psalmist I have been asking my soul, “Why are you downcast? Why are you disquieted?”

Grief has roots that tangle under the surface. You can’t tug on one without unsettling memories of other losses and separations. This time of pandemic-led physical separation, although not permanent (we hope), is also stirring up feelings of old losses. I miss my loved ones. I miss my friends. I miss my freedom. I know we shall soon meet again, but these nebulous emotions all end up in the same pot like some strange concoction of lament that ignores reason. It feels like grief.

I’ve been feeling a bit down and unusually nostalgic the last few days. Old movies, old songs, old photos, old recipes, and even old cars make me laugh, but also shed tears. This morning, it being Mother’s Day, I thought about my mother, who passed away eleven years ago. I wish I could sit in her kitchen and tell her about my day. I read many posts from motherless children and childless mothers on Facebook, so I know I am not the only one who is aware of the ambivalent feelings this day evokes.

Then I remembered this week also marks the anniversary of separation from my Dad as well.

Time shrinks and stretches with age, moreso without the usual daily landmarks that keep us oriented. What day is it? Has it been three or four years since I received the call that Dad died in his sleep? The fence needs painting again. Didn’t I just do that? Was it really almost sixty years since Daddy took the photo of Mom serving Kool-aid to the pretty little girls in their birthday party dresses? The house I grew up in shows up on Google maps. It is dwarfed by the trees my brother and I planted as seedlings we received at school. When did that happen?

Part of prayer is paying attention to the stirrings in our hearts as we lean in to hear our heavenly Father. God often speaks to me through music. As I asked him to bring clarity to this messy emotion a song started to play in my mind. It is Brahms’ setting of John 16:22. In English it reads:

“So will you also pass through a time of intense sorrow when I am taken from you, but you will see me again! And then your hearts will burst with joy, with no one being able to take it from you!” (from The Passion Translation that seeks to include emotional content)

These were Jesus’ words to his friends before he was taken from them. We know the next part of the story – that he conquered death and appeared to them again before ascending to his place with the Father. He told them, on that same evening he gave the warning, that something better was coming. He was sending the Holy Spirit to advocate, teach, comfort, and empower in his place.

We have the advantage of living on the other side of the cross. We know loss here and now, but we also know that Holy Spirit will never leave. He reminds us of the promise that is for both here and now and even more in the future: “Then your hearts will burst with joy with no one being able to take it from you!”

 

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

(Psalm 42:11 NIV)

My Grandmother, the Photographer

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, Photography7 Comments

grandma's early for the parade

Grandma was what they called “a character.” If you’re old enough to remember Tugboat Annie or Ma Kettle she could have been type-cast in either of those roles. I’ve written about my mother before so this Mother’s Day I’d like to honour my other mother.

She ran a boarding house in downtown east Calgary during the war years up until the end of the fifties. She told us it used to be the Northwest Mounted Police officer’s quarters before that. But it’s hard to know for sure. She was an honest woman, but facts underwent some sort of redistribution once they went through the shuffling process in her brain. Sometimes she just grabbed a date from one pile, a place from another and a name from a third and wound them all up in a story that we fondly referred to as “Grandma’s version.”

She could read if she was allowed to point to the words and move her lips, but bits of the information she gleaned that way ended up in scattered fact piles that just added colour to her already improvised histories. She said the one room school burned down before she was in third grade and the neighbours who helped build the first one never got around to help build a second so that’s all the learnin’ she got. Since the home she grew up in was thirty miles from the nearest road, that story was plausible.

Everyone all the way downtown knew her, including the shopkeepers, the bus drivers, the preachers at the Prophetic Bible Institute and the folks at city hall. She may not have been able to read books well, but she could read people and she was the ultimate extrovert and filled the house with all manner of friends, from the chief of police to the homeless guy with a three-legged dog. As a teen I remember her carrying around a camera with her and setting off a flash at some of the most inopportune times. (Maybe that’s where I got the habit.)

When my father had to reduce his worldly goods to fit into a room at the lodge I decided to put his photos on a digital frame. Since his memory is failing he asked me to label them. That’s when I found my grandmother’s photo albums with page after page of unidentifiable torsos. They all looked like healthy torsos but my grandmother had her own concept of photographic composition. She knew who they were. They make me smile. May I present some of her work?

 

 

Creative use of negative space

grandma's drapes

 

Portrait of Grandma’s favourite TV evangelist, Rex Humbard

 

grandma'srexhumbard

 

Grandma truly perfected the candid reluctant pose

 

grandma'scandidpose

 

Colour photography thrilled her, especially when she chose the outfits.

 

Dwayne, Melody, Wade Leah, Mervin

“Happy Irthday Ladies”. A cake and a record of someone’s efforts to attach mauve lace to a green tablecloth. Perhaps it had ecological significance.

grandma'scake

 

I can just hear her saying, “Here, Daddy. Hold my purse while I take a picture of you.”

 

grandpa's purse

 

Romantic anniversary shoots were her specialty.

 

grandma'sanniversary portait

 

Grandma taught her family her photographic techniques so they could pinch-hit in an emergency. This is Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th anniversary.

grandma's50th

 

Choosing the right setting communicates so much, and what could be more appropriate for a family from the dust bowl than a Saskatchewan sandstorm.

Dorsey Family

The truth is, she may have embarrassed me half to death, but I adored my grandmother. Since my own mother was often ill or working she was my main caretaker. She was a camp counselor at 81 years old and her cabin of girls loved her because she knew how to have fun -and she never read the rules.

She the one with the biggest smile.

The Donaldson Family

 

 

As a mother

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, Poetry3 Comments

Photo: Preciousbaby's foot charis

Mother’s Day can be horribly painful for some people.

I held more than one sobbing child in the big rocking chair during the darkest nights of their little lives. More than once I heard, “Why doesn’t my mommy love me?”

As a foster parent my own heart was torn up by the pain of little ones whose mothers chose alcohol or drugs over their kids, and with one exception all of the 24 children who arrived on our doorstep were there because their mothers’ own pain left them with nothing left to give. In the midst of drowning fear and emptiness they forgot their kids. It was hard to forgive them sometimes, but I realized that a person can’t give what they have never received, and these moms needed to be loved themselves.

God understands that too.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,

    that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget,

    yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)

None of us were parented perfectly. Even the most outstanding mother in the world has moments when her own deficits get in the way. That’s when Abba–Daddy-Father God, our Mother, can fill in. The Bible speaks of his gentle nurturing motherliness –something beyond gender.

For thus says the Lord:

“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,

    and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;

and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip,

    and bounced upon her knees.

As one whom his mother comforts,

    so I will comfort you;

    you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;

     your bones shall flourish like the grass;

and the hand of the Lord shall be known to his servants,

    and he shall show his indignation against his enemies. (Isaiah 66: 12-14)

More than a foster parent he adopts us and makes us full heirs. This is why I love adoption. It is a picture of being chosen and of lives redeemed by a perfect parent –without age limit.

Sometimes he also uses someone else with skin on to be an agent of this grace.

Paul wrote: For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed— God is witness.   Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.  (1 Thessalonians 23: 5-8)

A few years ago I wrote a hymn for Mother’s Day recognizing God as a mother and thanking him for all the “mothers” –biological, fostering, adopting, step-parenting, hosting, caring and mentoring (regardless of gender) he has put in our lives who have nurtured us in some way.

As a Mother

As a mother, on whose bosom,

rests a child in total trust,

so, oh Lord, You love and comfort

‘til our earth-bound fears are hushed.

As a mother guides and teaches

little children to obey

so, oh Lord, you firmly tell us,

“Listen child to what I say.”

As a mother waits with weeping

for a child who’s gone astray,

so, oh Lord, You wait with longing

‘til we find our homeward way.

As a mother who rejoices

when her child says, “I love you,”

so, oh Lord, Your heart rejoices

when we sing, “We love You too.”

We, your children, come before You

to give honour and to praise.

Thank you for the precious “mothers”

who have shown Your loving ways.

Help us, Lord, to love and nurture

those entrusted to our care,

‘til as one united family

we will live together there.

(suggested tune setting: The Welsh folksong, “Suo-Gan” )

God is good.