A New Year's Tale

 

So it was

on that long journey into childhood,

when few moments had accumulated

in Memory and fewer still as Family History,

before special days became Traditions,

the first Christmas I remember 

began in a snowdrift east of Cheyenne.

My father's truck stuck fast near the cattle gate

at the turn-in

to one straight mile of dirt road

leading to my grandfather's church

and the four room parsonage

miles from any ranch house.

Already bundled for cold, my brothers and I

pushed back the canvas door of Dad's homemade canopy,

climbed out of the truck bed to breathe air

untainted by exhaust. 

We leaned against the wind-driven snow,

scarves tightened over our noses, and

headed down the road toward parsonage lights

my parents assured us

they could see -- a family of pilgrims,

refugees, seekers of safe harbor in the storm -- 

Dad, Mom, the youngest brother carried,

we three older boys

-- all huddling as much as trudging allowed in a blizzard

-- all hoping the lantern in the truck bed would burn

long enough to save the television

with its huge cabinet, to keep

its tubes, its tiny screen from freezing in the arctic night.

And then we were welcomed in,

warming under blankets on the living room floor.

And the small blue pilot light of the gas furnace

that was the star of our arrival

became morning sun,

and my father and grandfather

were settling the television console into a corner,

our truck miraculously in the yard,

the night journey already lost

to the harrowing snows of yesterday.

And I sat up in my travel clothes to air 

full of women's voices and festive cooking in the kitchen.

And then it was, as it would be always from that day,

a real Christmas and the promised New Year.

 

 

A Christmas List

     Once upon a time, lists were a different thing. My mom always kept a grocery list, of course, but I am referring to a different kind of list. During my long ago childhood, which is to say, during the 1950s, I might have been asked what I wanted for Christmas. It was an adult question of the "what do you want to be when you grow up" sort. I just don't remember being asked. And a child who drew up a list 'for Santa' was a bit of a dreamer, at least in our house.

    Still, one year I received an ill-fitting football uniform that I must have begged desperately for. I may have worn the uniform once or twice for the front yard tackle football games we played, my brothers and I and neighborhood boys. Another year I got cowboy boots -- we lived in Wyoming, after all, within earshot of the stadium where Josh Allen played quarterback for Wyoming Cowboys many decades later. I liked the cowboy boots and wore them, although clearly I would have wanted higher heels rather than the flat boots my parents chose.

    "Wish Lists," "bucket lists," and on-line "registries" were far in the future. When I was growing up, grown-ups mostly thought in terms of "what does he need?" At least if one judges by the presents themselves -- socks, pajamas, 3-in-a-pack tidy whities, a white shirt for Sunday -- need  is what pulled the Christmas gift wagon. 

    So, back in the day, as we say now, when I was a young man with a young family and a new career as a teacher and maybe also great literary ambitions -- at a time when I could, in fact, and sometimes did burn the candle at both ends -- I wrote a poem called "Christmas List." Like the poem in my Christmas post, this poem has one foot on the stony path of every day life; but most of the weight here is on the other foot, the one treading the larger realm of universals.

    I won't assume, dear reader, that you need to have the poem explained. Nevertheless, on the other side of the poem I will point out things that might shed light on my 'list'.

 

Christmas List

 

A knife for salvation

A book for its doors

A voice or a fence for freedom

    either will do

Mice for comfort

A clock for anxiety

A pen, a pen to live by

Hands to shape the air

Window casings to sing in the freshening wind

A moment, a chair

& light

Yes, a little circle of light

    Odd as it may appear on first reading, this poem is special to me. It does a lot of work, one might say. As the last poem in Simple Clutter  it brings a note of redemption to a book that grows dark near its end, not all that different from the dark days of December at year's end. "Light" is the last word of this last poem; "a little circle of light" is the last, and "telling," phrase. The real life bones of the book -- its skeleton, if you will -- "a book," "a voice," "a pen," "a moment," "a chair/ & light" -- are my tools; they are what a writer needs to work. 

    This noting of 'bones' references my own daily occupation with writing, but it is hardly a stretch to identify them as devotion as well. "A clock," which for the writer is also both time for the task at hand and a deadline, may also be one of those bones. Setting aside the "knife" and "mice' references for a broader discussion, the other, less direct elements might be understood as constraints, obstacles, limitations, and maybe inspiration, or even as process.

    We are working in the margins here, I know. But let the ideas sink in for a moment; poems are inherently an argument to slow down and to pay attention. The last line, already mentioned as providing a note of redemption is more than just the light that drops from a small work lamp onto a page one is laboring over. It is more than habitual acts of devotion. One might also think of it as illumination, insight, which appears to push aside the darkness that so quickly and easily characterizes our lives.

    If we follow out these ideas, as I am hoping we will, the poem as a "list" of what is hoped for constitutes a prayer for the handful of things necessary to enable the many layered life one, me in particular, may desire. These are not the cowboy boots with the low heels or the ill-fitting uniform that somehow appeared on my childhood "wish list," had I known such a thing.

 

    Though of far less magnitude, the possibilities of the last phrase are akin to the request Solomon of God to grant him wisdom -- not inspiration, not command, not integrity, not recognition, not imagination, however much these things might follow. But insight."Wisdom," being translated, is first recognition, followed by deep understanding, then knowing what to say or to do, then as required by acting wisely.

    "Yes, a little circle of light." Just imagine. That would be no small thing for God to grant us at Christmas. Or for the New Year.

    Or at any time.

Early on a Morning Near Christmas

     A decade or more before the turn of the millennium, we were living in an old farmhouse on a hillside above the village where I had recently begun teaching at a small college. The house faced hills to the east and the village lay below us along the river in the valley. My wife was in the ninth month of pregnancy, our child due somewhere around Christmas.

 

    Our close neighbor, living in another old farmhouse no more that one hundred feet away, was also expecting near the end of December. It was a great joy for both women to share that season of pregnancy as good and comfortable friends. 

    I have lost some of the precise details of this story in the years since. But what I know with certainty is that our neighbors' son arrived just ahead of Christmas day, while our son delayed well into January. When we heard our neighbors' news from the father, Paul, I began to reflect -- or "ponder," as we are told Mary did -- on all things related to the birth of a child into our world in this season of short days and continuing cold. 

    What did it mean, such a unique, yet completely common, human experience? I imagined Paul coming home from the hospital in the wee dark hours of that December morning when all the people he might rush to tell were still asleep. As is my habit, I wrote out of that moment -- which survives here in this poem, "News of Your Son."

News of Your Son

A tiny star 

in the black wilderness 

of a winter morning, 

the air like iron.

Wind has ceased,

boots crunch in the snow.

The horses, still shadows;

houses on streets below 

the pasture 

closed down, like sleeping faces.

Slow smoke of banked fires.

Now you on this errand                                                      

at this hour

in this deadly air 

in the pit of winter, 

looking for someone 

to share your joy at this news . . .

    The question is, "how might one announce such a singularly joyous event to a world that considers such things commonplace?" Or, we could ask "why detail a personal event as if it were a moment of universal consequence?" Christmas was on my mind -- but why run the two stories together?

    The best answer I can give is that each child is born defenseless, through a woman's travail. Yet from that moment of water and blood, a child is born with eternity in his or her heart. 

 

    That observation might be made of every good poem as well. So, a poem about our neighbor resonates with the Bible account of the Incarnation. It is true, brothers and sisters, that we walk with one foot on the stony path and the one foot on an eternal one. Today we are newly reminded of our condition. This is the day of God's favor. May we always count it so.     

["News of Your Son" published in Simple Clutter, 1998 by Mellen Press & 2018 by Wipf & Stock]

For the Love of Little People

    The morning after we arrived in London we were sitting at a sidewalk table at the Cafe Paradiso near the upper end of High Street, Chiswick, when I heard a familiar voice. "Dah-ddy," the little voice said in clear, round tones, "May I press the but-ton?"

    I have seen enough episodes of "Peppa Pig" with my young grandsons to know that voice anywhere! I turned around, not really expecting to see Peppa, but delighted to know that somewhere little girls really do talk like that. There was a tiny girl with a backpack and a bicycle helmet standing on a small, three-wheel scooter. When the traffic stopped and the green "walk" figure popped onto the screen, Daddy pulled her across the street with a tether attached to the front of her scooter.

     Among the subjects that capture my interest anywhere I travel are the little people who are busy being little people. It has happened everywhere I have traveled. When I have my camera in hand -- with permission when parents are nearby -- I take photographs of little people being themselves.

    What I find most compelling about little people engaged in play are two characteristics: one is their lack of self-consciousness as they go about the serious business of imagining, often playing alone with toys and sometimes interacting in groups. The second characteristic I find compelling is how similar young children act across the variety of cultures. Young minds are young minds are young minds. And before they have been pulled into attitudes and behaviors that dominate the adult world, they simple do what they want to do and regard the person with the camera -- if they notice at all -- with openness and curiosity.

    I began to include children among the "interests" I stop to photograph during our stay in Korea and China in 2011. The little boy in black (above) was playing in the ruins of an abandoned Hakka village. Prior to visiting the village with our Chinese hosts, I was unaware of this Han-Chinese subgroup. The ruins were interesting in themselves, but the little boy was fascinating. His improvised toys were sticks and some green plants. He was totally absorbed in his play and absolutely unfazed by the arrival of a carload of folks who wanted to walk through the old buildings. When we finished our short tour and came back to our car, he was gone. He had been playing by himself, the only local person we encountered there.

     Some months prior to that visit to China we spotted this little boy in Korea.

    What caught my eye about the Korean boy was his elaborate hanbok (traditional Korean attire). We encountered him as we were touring an area of Seoul with Chloe, one of our Korean home-stay daughters. I wanted a photograph, so I held up my camera to his parents, also dressed in hanbok, and pointed to the boy. They seemed more than pleased that I would take an interest. The boy and his family were celebrating his first birthday, which is traditionally an important occasion in a country with an historically high infant mortality rate.

     As we might imagine, dispassionate observation can teach us a great deal about a culture; watching young children may be one of the most revealing. It was also in Korea that we frequently witnessed very young school children traveling in pairs and columns led by teachers and helpers. The sense of  community responsibility and self-discipline begins early in Korea.

    Of course, little people share many characteristics that transcend cultural boundaries, such as we see with this little boy driving his toy vehicle through a puddle. The fact that the puddle is on a public thoroughfare makes no difference to him; he was as oblivious to foot traffic nearby as the little boy playing with sticks in my first photograph was oblivious to our carload of chatting visitors.

    Where there are no sticks or cars or puddles, a little person can find delight in whatever-is-there. This little girl, just one of our Asian "grandchildren," is turning her world upside down for the sheer joy of it.

    Or this little girl who, enchanted by this erhu player in Shenzhen, has moved as close to the music as she can. Spotting her the moment we passed by was a real gift to me. The photograph makes me smile every time I see it. I love her total lack of self-consciousness. There is a kind of deeply human magic here.

    All of these experiences, of course, remind me of my own children and my own grandchildren, the ways they have of exploring and the delight evident in their straightforward adventures. Much of this natural curiosity and openness eventually becomes complicated and outgrown, and too often this natural playfulness gets blunted, overtaken by other pressures. But for a while it is affirming to see that at some early point we are all, as humans, compelled by the same joy in life.

    Perhaps it is just the grandfather in me, but I love the way nearly every episode of "Peppa Pig" ends with the whole family falling to the ground laughing! I wonder whether Jesus had some of this open sharing in mind when he admonished his disciples to bring the little children to him. We often think of that New Testament story in narrow terms of "simple faith," which surely it is. But it might well be that his intention went well beyond that singularity to that openness to life and to others he offers us. For of such is the kingdom of heaven.

     

Russia (#23) p.s.: The long way home

     Cameras, luggage, and memories stowed away, we said goodbye to Moscow early the next morning.

    Our last moments in Moscow involved a lot of posing. In the days before selfies, of course, it was usually a matter of the person with the camera (John Woodard in this case) saying, "Stand with so and so, and try to look pleasant." Here my son Stefan and Dan Sorensen embrace the moment.

 

    In conversation at some point, our translator Andrew discovered I was a poet. As we were leaving Vladimir he gave me two books of Russian poetry in Russian, which I still have and still can't read. Sadly. He was earnest in giving me the books, so I remember thinking how can I refuse??

    When we got to Moscow, Andrew found several memorial statues of the poet Alexandr Pushkin that he thought I needed to stand beside for a photograph. This is the best of the lot, taken somewhere near the Bolshoi Theater.

 

 

 

   At the huge war memorial we visited before eating at the Mongolian restaurant, many of the boys posed with one of the WWII era canons.

 

 

 

 The trip home was uneventful, as one always hopes air flight will be, but for the slowly evolving panorama beneath us.

    Most of our team spent the hours of flight sleeping or watching the inflight movies, which were screened for everyone in those day. The movie on offer was Bruce Almighty. For my part, I spent my time looking out the window and trying to fill in my journal, thinking someday I might want to write an account of our journey and thinking, correctly as it happens, that I would need all the contemporaneous detail I could find. 

    When the clouds gave way beneath us as we approached Greenland, I watched as the seascape turned to landscape. I remember thinking what a marvelous thing this is to see such severe beauty. How will I ever remember?

    My notes say, "the deep blue of the sky and the deep blue of the ocean are separated only by a band of clouds on the horizon. Greenland gradually takes shape as we recognize rugged mountains with fjords cutting between them. The entire scene is blue and white, so absolutely gorgeous as to be other worldly: the mountains white with veins of blue and the ocean blue with white lines, breakers, paralleling the shore. I am in awe. God be praised."

    Then we were on the ground in Toronto scrambling for bags for the long anticipated ride back to Houghton. I loved that we had gone, I loved the Russians we had met, I loved the places we had visited so briefly, and I loved how my heart had been challenged and my world expanded. Now, more than anything, I wanted to return to my wife and the rest of my kids, the people I love most in the world.

Russia (#22) An Afternoon in Moscow, Pt.2

    It is hard for me to imagine a visit to Russia from the vantage point of 2023. Our missions trip in 2004 came during a period of what appeared to be warming relations between the Russian Federation and western Europe and the US. Putin had already assumed command of the Russian state. Despite the fact that his government was waging war in Chechnya, there were no clear signs to us, as ordinary Americans, that things would deteriorate. Those of us who were old enough to remember the old Soviet days were more concerned about vestiges of Soviet era concerns than we were about new threats, fears, and restrictions yet to develop.

     We were happy as a group that we had completed the tasks of friendship-making that had been our primary mission. Our attention on that last day of our tour in Russia in 2004 was on what and how much we could see of Moscow in a few hours on an April afternoon. 

    So, a question:  suppose you had a few hours of a single afternoon to tour Paris, what would you choose to see? Likely you would choose well known landmarks, those you know from photographs -- Notre Dame, for example, and the Eiffel Tower. In London, you might choose St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. In Moscow the tourist magnet is, naturally, Red Square and the architecturally stunning buildings around it, beginning with St. Basil's and the Kremlin itself. Fortunately for us at the end of our short visit, many of the places we knew about either bordered Red Square or were within walking distance.

    And what a way to crown our quick trip to Russia! The marvels around Red Square are wonderful in photographs. But in person they are seriously stunning, engrossing, provocative. St. Basil's Cathedral, much photographed and deservedly famous, is riveting from any angle.  Every feature of that church, of course, displays multiple, complex layers of spiritual and historical significance. 

    

    Scale is impressive everywhere in Russia, and Red Square itself is no exception -- it is huge. The older members of our fathers and sons group remembered Red Square from black and white television programs in the 1950s and 1960s. often featuring Nikita Khrushchev and the Communist Party inner circle standing atop the Kremlin wall. May Day parades especially featured military hardware -- tanks, missiles, and ranks of soldiers marching. Those demonstrations of military might required both space and a solid surface of cobblestones.

 The Iberian Gate (also called the Resurrection gate, below) with its little green chapel was torn down in 1931 to allow room for the heavy military equipment on display. The twin gates and the little chapel were rebuild in 1994-95 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

     Along one side of Red Square is the Kremlin wall and gate, which were originally wooden fortifications built in the 12th Century. It was built on high ground at the confluence of two rivers, a strategic location at the center of the city. Muscovites could find protection within the walls from invaders. Protection from invasion were frequently  noted to explain various historical events; and the presence of walls, gates, and fortifications here as in Vladimir bore witness to the very real fear of foreign invasion. 

    For the last hundred years at least, the term "Kremlin" has been synonymous with the seat of government, first for the Soviet Union and now for the Russian Federation. And while the very recent "advance" toward Moscow by the mercenary Wagner military forces would have been unlikely to reach the Kremlin without serious fighting, it is easy for me to imagine how age-old fears might have been stirred up. 

    Fortifications help explain my sense that we were never far from a military presence. Another deep impression I could not avoid was spiritual. As famous as St. Basil's may be for its unique architecture, it is only one of a number of churches around Red Square that testify to the close relationship between the Russian people and Christianity. The Church of the Assumption, also bordering Red Square, is known, at least to tourists, as "the pink church." Like nearly all churches in Russia, those around Red Square were closed during the Soviet era. Some were given over to other purposes and some became museums. Since the collapse of the USSR, religion has regained legal status and some closed churches, though clearly not all, have reopened.

    We were not able to enter any of the buildings, churches or otherwise, but all of them contain treasures of cultural, artistic, and religious artifacts of incalculable value.

     While the military presence was not as visible as we might have expected, it was never far away. Perhaps most of the military presence remained out of sight. But there were armed soldiers standing guard at the eternal flame near the tomb of the unknown soldier and at Lenin's mausoleum, both at the base of the Kremlin wall. The mausoleum (the squarish building above) was closed for periodic "restoration" of Lenin's body, which had been lying in state since his death in 1924. Had it been open on the day of our visit, some of us would likely have wanted to wait in line for a viewing. We were told that on days when visiting was possible, the wait to enter could be extremely long.

    A group of off duty soldiers who happened to be touring the sights at Red Square were happy to pose for a photograph, not far from where our group had posed. Here too it would have been interesting to know whether these soldiers had been or were likely to be deployed to Chechnya. It is fair to say that none in our group had been aware of the fighting in Chechnya before our trip. And certainly no one -- that is, no Russian -- ever mentioned or commented on it.

    Seeing them with a father's eyes and being aware of how young men were being drafted into service for the war effort, I was impressed with how young the soldiers all looked.

    Behind the soldiers, just to the left, is Lenin's mausoleum. And the huge red building just to the right (also below) is State Historical Museum, which would have been a serious contender for my attention had it been open.

  Below is a section of the wall that appears to show older stone work and an entryway to the massive, yellow City of Moscow Government Building behind it. This and other sections of Red Square were being renovated. It is also possible that this fence was intended to inhibit terrorist activity such as the bombing of the subway earlier in the year. For my part it was disappointing; I am always fascinated by how building styles and materials are integrated when repairs or restoration are required.

   Not on Red Square but nearby is the theater where the famous Bolshoi Ballet Company performs in Moscow.

    With more time to visit these sites, we might have asked about tickets to see the Bolshoi Company perform and to marvel at the interior of this building.

    A lot of these photographs seem remote to me after nearly twenty years. It has been difficult at times to reconstruct various elements of our touring experience. That said, I am certain that we would make a mistake to suggest that the heart and soul of ordinary Russians is reflected in the actions of their government. I have found this disjunction to be true in all the countries I have visited, especially in those where government actions are not held accountable through the courts and through elections.

      I am certain as well that war is always tragic and nearly always unnecessary. As I finish writing this post in July 2023, news has reached us that a Russian missile has hit and badly damaged the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odessa, Ukraine. How this targeting of an ancient Orthodox church is related to the Russian military's strategic interests remains unclear. But I can only hope that, whatever his reasoning, Mr. Putin's actions have not put targets on the historic gems in his own front yard.

 

Russia (#21) An Afternoon in Moscow, Pt. 1

    We de-trained when we arrived in Moscow and immediately boarded a bus for a city wide excursion. "Excursion," here, means a bus tour around the city: a drive past or a pause beside famous places. In that fashion, we passed by the Kremlin, Red Square, Saint Basil's Church, Peter the Great's Memorial, the 1980 Winter Olympic site, Moscow State University, the huge Great Patriotic War Memorial (where we were permitted to disembark and walk around), and Christ the Savior Cathedral.

    Having seen these wonders mostly from afar and in motion, we exited the tour bus at one end of Arbat Street, a kilometer-long open-market pedestrian "mall" in central Moscow, where we would eat lunch at McDonald's and shop for small keepsakes to take home. McDonald's was exceptionally clean, otherwise it was exactly as we all expected.

    Two-thirds of the shops on Arbat Street, which we walked after lunch, had already closed since this was a morning market area.

    As with most shopping opportunities, it was helpful to have an interpreter to help with negotiations or barter or for information. Below, Andrew is explaining something to me as he made the rounds as our team investigated various souvenir venues. 

    I was not a serious shopper on Arbat Street since I already had my treasure, Andrew's hand-carved and hand-painted nativity set, now safely packed in my suitcase. Stefan visited the many displays of original art for something engaging that would survive the trip back to the States.

     When we reached the other end of Arbat Street, purchases in hand, we entered the subway for our ride to our hotel. Although I am aware that we tend to learn in layers when we travel, questions remain. How does one begin to recognize what makes a place significant? What features tell us enough about a particular place? Clearly, I didn't know entirely what to pay attention to on these quick visits. The bus tour helped a bit. Being with translators like Andrew helped a great deal. But having "caught" some things the first time around, the traveler ideally needs to return to build on first knowledge.

    One of those tantalizing bits of information we were told was that a "terrorist" bombing on the subway two months before happened near where we were boarding. Forty-one people were killed and hundreds injured. The attack was linked somehow to the ongoing conflict with Chechnya that none of us had heard much about. It appeared on the "evening news," then quickly disappeared as our news stories commonly do. Few in the West speak of it, but  parallels with the present conflict in Ukraine are striking.

    The subway, by the way, we found to be gorgeous, ornate, clean, full of compelling mosaics -- so apart from the possibility of being bombed again, which was real if remote, the subway was a treat.

    An hour later we rode the subway back into the city for dinner at a Mongolian restaurant and, afterward, to tour Red Square.

     While not conspicuous from the outside, the eating area in the Mongolian Restaurant is shaped like a huge yurt, a word new to me at that time. There was a central, circular fire pit, around which the tables were arranged. The outside walls were constructed of logs and the inner walls were wood-paneled. Sadly, I did not record what we ate, but I know it was "meat." And why no one took photographs of the inside of the restaurant is puzzling.

    Our walk through Red Square needs its own conversation [see Pt.2]. In my look back on this quick tour, I wonder about the whole "tourist" experience, what it means or ought to mean. I have been to Russia, seen the gems of Moscow, briefly, and mostly from the outside. That visit was the first of what I had hoped to be several opportunities, several layers of seeing, although a return now appears impossible. I must confess I have never wanted to be a tourist, as we commonly think of that role. That is why I particularly treasure the months Donna and I were able to live in north London and in Busan, Korea. That is why it was so meaningful for us to participate in worship services and to visit in homes in Egypt and for our basketball team to visit a home church and to venture into the muddy back streets earlier in our visit to Vladimir.

    In short, I have a strong desire to go places, to see and hear, to get closer to the heart of what it means to be Egyptian or Korean or Chinese or, in this case, Russian, to meet people where they live. I have wanted to see beyond the pictures in the books, to see things in a different light.

[Credit: This and many of the clearer photographs were taken by John Woodard. While many of us stood at the same spot, here and elsewhere, and snapped the same scene, John's photos are often the best of the lot.]