Tag: understanding

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Writing Down the Bones – Card #4 of 60: What is Silent?

When Dad died, my brother and I wanted his sweet dog Kona to understand why he’d suddenly disappeared from her life.

It’s a lot.

It’s heavy.

I’m putting space between my words and the photo today in an intentional way so you have time to back out if you don’t want to go with me all the way to the truth. You can still jump off at the edge of it.

Here’s the bottom line: Dad wanted the story of Kona shared. People were asking. It was, without a doubt, his most painful part of his passing. He held a deep love for every dog he’d ever had, but none was more special than Kona.

Kona dropped into his life straight out of heaven. No one gets a pedigreed Schnoodle for free. But that’s what happened on a night when I was too sick to sleep in my own bed, so I took to the guest room so I wouldn’t keep my husband awake. I was scrolling Facebook and noticed in a Schnoodle page a post from a desperate owner who was going through a divorce and could not keep his dog. He was looking for a lifeline, and he found it in me. Dad had recently had to put down the last of the dogs he and our mother shared. Her final understandable words to him were, “You take care of these dogs.” That’s how it was, and Ken and I knew it the day we went home and saw that our framed photos had been replaced with pictures of Mulligan and Georgia Girl.

We get it. Dogs are much easier to love than even our own children.

I summoned my husband to drive me to Valdosta so I could pick up a dog. I tag teamed with my brother to deliver her to our father and gave him 48 hours to accept or reject her, with the full understanding I would take her back in a heartbeat. The truth: I came very close to keeping her and never giving him the option of keeping this joyful little sweet girl.

But when the man stepped out of his truck, a guidance counselor from a Florida high school meeting me halfway at the distance between us and in full tears, unable to say a word other than to hand me the pup and all her belongings, he was wearing a Florida State University t-shirt. My mother had gone to Florida State. It was a sign.

This free dog was being handed to our father by our mother, and I knew it.

Dad fell in love with Kona from the moment he saw her, but he toyed with us at first. On his deathbed, he declared her “the best gift ever.” He took her everywhere, including Winn Dixie, where he grocery shopped. If Kona didn’t go, he didn’t go – the exception being church. She knew when he put his good shoes on that she would have to stay, and she pouted in the chair as he readied himself.

Kona kept Dad going and bought him years beyond the usual. He bonded with dog park friends, who had their own section at his funeral. He held ceremonies in that dog park for departed pets.

Fast forward to the end.

I was expecting to welcome Kona into our fold with our three Schnoodles – Boo Radley, Fitz, and Ollie. But Dad flipped the script, calling his dog park friend Ann to the hospital as he was dying, introducing my brother and me to her, and explaining that Kona was to remain with Ann, who had told him that “as long as there is Kona, I will always have a piece of you.” Her husband, Andy, was good with that. Theirs was a unique friendship.

I respected and appreciated that Kona would stay with her tribe – the people and dogs and places she loves.

When we’d arrived back at the hospice facility after Dad died, they had him covered in a yellow blanket with a Bible verse embroidered on the corner. Ken asked if I had any ideas for that blanket, a gift from hospice. I suggested recycling it, but Ken said, “No, they’re proud of this. Let’s give it to Kona. It will hold his scent for her.”

He was right. We arranged for the new owner to bring Kona to the funeral home for a last visit with her master she’d loved so dearly. We wanted her to understand that Dad hadn’t abandoned her willfully – – that there was a reason he’d left, and it was beyond his control. We asked the funeral home not to launder the blanket – and after a quizzical look, we explained why.

Ann arrived with Kona, and my brother took her in for one last visit with Dad before he was buried. I’d love to post all of the photos I have so that you could see the progression of an excited dog checking out the owner she surely thought at first was asleep, but those photos probably violate every social media rule of respect for the dead. But the most telling one, I cropped. The eyes tell it all, if you choose to scroll and see.

This, my friends, is what is silent in response to the prompt card today: What is Silent?

What is silent

is a beloved

companion pet

understanding

that her master

is gone

forever

and showing

her broken heart

through her eyes.

That is what is silent.

(Please scroll down for the photo – which will show the story as Dad would have wanted folks to see and understand. Many have asked. Kona is in good hands. Kona will have a new family to help her through her grief. But she knows. She knows.)

After excitedly checking out Dad in his casket, Kona realizes the truth. You can see it in her eyes as she assures my brother Ken that she understands what has happened.
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Clifton’s Cliffhanger – The Stafford Challenge Day 50, SOLC Day 6

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for giving writers an encouraging and safe space.

I’m borrowing a line or two from Lucille Clifton today, from her book Quilting: Poems 1987-1990, to write a borrowed line poem. This line in italics is from her poem “eyes”:
I could say so much to you
if you could understand me

Photo by Andrea Turner on Pexels.com
Resyntaxed Semantics

I could say so much to you
if you could understand me 

but the mixmaster
spun the vinyl
resyntaxed
semantics

now
I'm the one 
who doesn't 
recognize
the tune

I once knew
the original
lyrics
of
y
o
u

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Spirituality: Reverend Dr. Felix Haynes, Jr. on the Power of Books

Today’s guest writer is my father, Rev. Dr. Felix Haynes, Jr. , who shares his thoughts on the power of books to shape lives.

THE POWER OF BOOKS


In Little Letters to God, Margaret E. Sangster includes the following letter:


Dear God:
Three books came to me in this morning’s mail. They were messages from friends who wanted to share with me the pleasure of the printed word. One book was a love story, one was sparkling with inspiration, and one was a travel book that would transport me into far, forgotten places of the earth. As I unwrapped these books, I felt a sudden sense of reverence – reverence for you, God, who has given the authors a great expression. Through their eyes—and your wisdom—I shall be permitted to widen my vision.

Reading good books becomes a tool to widen our horizons and expand the depth of human experience. The poet Frances Thompson said books became to him “trumpet sounds from the hidden battlements of eternity.”

Books are forces to deepen our lives through spiritual and human development.
Well-selected books can push us towards a greater grasp of human maturity. Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”


Christian growth is a process, an alluring quest – exciting and fulfilling. Delving into the spirit of reading and study prevents stagnation. Life is an adventure, when we dare to climb, with compelling vistas that beckon us to new heights of understanding. Books are rungs on the ladder.


I have frequently used the metaphor of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poem The Chambered Nautilus as an example of an ever-maturing growth pattern. This beautiful seashell is gradually enlarging compartments in which the mollusk lives as it grows larger and larger. The snail-like creature that lives inside grows and moves into the next compartment, where further growth and development occurs. This process continues in ever-increasing sized chambers, until finally, in the largest compartment, it moves out. The shell it leaves is a thing of great beauty – a fascinating analogy of the human spirit, continually growing and expanding, building ever more stately mansions.


In life, we travel various avenues in the quest of expanding our fulfillment on the journey. The power of the printed page is one such avenue, and when you combine this tool with dialogue and discussion about a book, it becomes a significant life-shaping kind of experience.


Dr. E. Glenn Hinson was one of the most probing professors of my seminary experience. His book Seekers After a Mature Faith states in the Preface:

“I have written this book with a firm conviction that private devotion is essential to the life of the {Christian} and that devotional classics have much to contribute to that devotion. The Bible holds many expressions about the power of the printed page. In the oldest of all biblical documents, the Book of Job, Job says:

'Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were
graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. For I know that my redeemer lived, and
He shall stand in the latter day upon the earth.” (Job 19:23-25).'


Job’s passion was to remind those who would suffer of the greatness of God. The best of books that convey life-messages are prompted by a deep desire to help others along their journey.”


Ralph Waldo Emerson commented in one of his essays that reading books molds an individual. Any casual reading of biography will confirm this truth of the value of books on one’s life. For example, Charles Colson in his biography Born Again attributes much of his conversion to Christianity to reading C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

Samuel Miller of Harvard Divinity School has cited three things that a book may do to nurture faith. First, he says that a book can help “name” an experience. A book can help one see the reality of some experience in a manner that helps in some way to better deal with a situation. The “word is made flesh” and we weave the insight into character. A second benefit in the book’s nurturing of faith is that it can “resurrect certain levels or dimensions of our consciousness from a dormant condition.” In other words, self- understanding ~ in this respect, a book becomes the stimulus to an honest appraisal of one’s life. Authenticity emerges in a healthier manner. We can see ourselves in the pilgrimage of others. Another’s experience can bring about an awareness of some repressed areas which we many have neglected. The book leads to an understanding necessary to the revelation of a new vision. A third benefit is that a well selected book encourages productive reflection. We stretch and improve our spiritual posture.


A book that provides a good reading experience baffles and embraces us, inspires and challenges; and it can startle and unsettle. The values are inestimable intellectually and fuels the imagination causing one to reach for new heights. We should expect occasions in the reading of good books which cause us to rethink opinions and face new truths that change our path on the journey.


Charles Kingsley, a revered English writer says, “Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.” I would be quick to add this observation, based on my Doctor of Ministry work: The two things that most affect a person’s life are the people we meet and the books we read. I think Thomas a Kempis said the most appropriate word about the power of Books:


"If he should not lose his reward who gives a cup of cold water to his thirsty
neighbor, what will not be the reward of those who by putting good books into the hands of those neighbors, open to them the fountains of eternal life?"


And Mark Twain, who always has a bold word, appropriately reminds us that “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.“