Five Minute Friday: PRESENT

Today I'm linking up with the Five Minute Friday community, writing for five minutes on a given prompt.

This week's word is PRESENT.

 

If you've read Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Pest, you'll remember Ramona's first day of kindergarten, and all the mishaps and misadventures she experiences as she struggles to adjust to new people, new routines ... and new words.

One of the most memorable moments is when her teacher, Miss Binney, points to a seat and tells Ramona, "Sit here for the present."

Ramona is so excited: she thinks sitting in this seat means she'll get a present.

But she's disappointed when after a lengthy, expectant wait, no present appears. Finally her teacher has to explain to her that "Sit here for the present" doesn't mean "Sit here and you'll get a gift"; it means "Sit here for now."

I think a lot of us can relate to Ramona's disillusionment. We believe that if we just wait patiently, complete the task, make the sacrifice, then we'll be rewarded with a wonderful outcome. In Ramona's case she's mistaken because she doesn't know that the word present has another meaning. In our case I think we are sometimes mistaken because we see life as transactional. "I did what I was supposed to do; I should have received a payoff!"

Advent -- especially Advent 2020 -- is a good time to set aside transactional thinking. This year, and this season, teaches us to hold our expectations lightly, wait in hope, and not demand results or rewards. 

It also reminds us that present has a third meaning besides "gift" and "now"; it also means "close at hand." "Nearby." "Here." 

"The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son,

and they will call him Immanuel, 

which means God With Us."

Matthew 1:23

 

Back yard stuff

Last Sunday Jonathan went out with his EA for a few hours, so I took a quiet early morning walk.

I enjoy exploring some of the hidden paths in town, little back alleys and lanes that you would never know existed if you weren't on foot. The one in the picture above goes from behind a parking lot, down a small hill to a green space with trees in the middle, then out to a large park and field behind what was once a school.

These paths often extend behind the back fences of homes, and sometimes you can see the stuff people store or hide back there. I've seen tires and other car parts,  swing sets and lawn furniture, carpets and couches, building and plumbing supplies, bikes. 

It can be hard to tell at just a glance what the "plan" -- if any -- might be for these things: whether it's stuff they want to keep but have nowhere else to put, or stuff they want to get rid of and haven't gotten around to dealing with.

We all have stuff like that, don't we. Some of it's literal, tangible stuff: for example, we had an old flowered couch hanging around for five years (!) (in the basement actually, not the back yard) until we finally disposed of it a couple of months ago when our neighbour was taking a load to the dump with his truck.

I imagine we all have a lot of intangible stuff hanging around, too. Projects we started and abandoned. Routines that we follow out of habit because they are comforting but that aren't really serving us well anymore. Relationships that we've haven't tended to in a long time -- or that we've clung to for too long. Dreams that we've placed on the back burner but haven't given up on yet.

It's hard to know what to keep and what to let go of. It can sometimes be easier just not to deal with it. And even when we decide "OK, it's time, I'm ready to get rid of this," we might not be able to get the metaphorical flowered sofa out of our basement or back yard and into that truck all on our own. We might need some help with it. It might not be as easy as just making a decision.

Walking along these back lanes is a good reminder for me not to judge the stuff in other people's back yards -- literal or figurative -- because I have my own. We all do. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.

My poem, "Leaving home for the last time"

This week I was pleased to have a poem of mine, "Leaving home for the last time," published in the online journal Juniper Poetry.  You can read the poem HERE.

It was based on my final visit, in June 2017, to our farm in PEI before it was sold. I actually wrote about that visit in a previous blog post as well. But poetry always takes things in a slightly different direction -- leaving out some bits and homing in on others.

I had submitted this poem to seven other places before Juniper took it. It is always gratifying when a piece finds just the right home.

 

Five Minute Friday: CHURCH

Today I'm linking up with the Five Minute Friday community, writing for five minutes on a given prompt.

This week's word: CHURCH.

 

photo Jeannie Prinsen 2017

In the spring of 2017 my daughter and I took the train from our home in Kingston, Ontario to Moncton, New Brunswick and then went on to PEI.

Our return train trip began on a beautiful Sunday evening, and as we rolled along south of Miramichi, New Brunswick, I saw this church. I only had a couple of seconds to grab my phone and try to photograph it through the train window. Somehow I managed to capture it.

I don't know the name or denomination of this church.* It appears to be in the middle of nowhere, though that might not be true at all; maybe it's right beside a busy, bustling road. But that's how it looks to me: secluded from the world. The church spire and the trees and bushes are all bathed in light, reaching toward the sky. It's as if humans and nature are all worshipping God in this out-of-the-way place. Even if the rest of the world doesn't see, God does.

That church is probably empty this weekend. Ours will be. So will thousands of churches worldwide, because of the pandemic. But that doesn't mean there is no worship happening. Chris Rice's song "And Your Praise Goes On" says,

Now rise up everything that lives:
flap your wings and leap for joy.
Forest, lift your arms and sway;
clap your hands, you ocean waves.

And Your praise goes on, rising to Your throne
where You bless our toil and play.
Through the clouds they rise; Your praises fill the skies
till the setting of the sun –
And Your praise goes on.

 Even if we can't be in church, we can join the trees and ocean waves as they praise the God who made them and sees them.

 

*************** 

 * Update: A Twitter friend read this post, did some snooping (i.e. Googling), and determined that this is The Most Pure Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Barnaby River, New Brunswick. Thanks, H.!

 

Five Minute Friday: MERCY

Today I'm linking up with Five Minute Friday, writing for five minutes on a given prompt. This week's word is MERCY.

Richard and I have been watching a very entertaining drama series called A Place to Call Home this summer, and the episode we watched last night was a fascinating example of the complex relationship between justice and mercy. (NOTE: IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY WATCHING OR INTEND TO WATCH THIS SHOW, YOU MAY WISH TO STOP READING TO AVOID SPOILERS.)

In the show, an evil, malicious man and woman (we'll call them Bad Guy and Bad Gal) are working together to bring down a wealthy but (mostly) good family. They do some terrible things to this family out of ambition, envy, revenge, resentment, twisted love -- all kinds of reasons.

But eventually Bad Gal is brought low, and gradually, over a period of three years, she starts to change. Bad Guy wants to keep using her to hurt the rich family -- but bit by bit she starts siding with the family, telling them Bad Guy's plans and how to get back at him. Because she's done such awful things on her own and in the service of Bad Guy, none of them wants to trust her at first. But slowly that changes too. The warnings she gives them come true. The suggestions she makes for how to thwart Bad Guy actually work. They begin to believe that -- despite all her malicious deeds -- she might actually be on their side after all.

When Bad Guy realizes Bad Gal has been working against him rather than for him, everything explodes, and Bad Gal is found dead. All the evidence points to Bad Guy, who is charged with her murder.

But then two members of the family make a shocking discovery: that Bad Gal actually ended her own life in hopes that Bad Guy would be charged with her murder. Bad Guy had the motive to kill her, and he probably wanted to, perhaps even tried to -- but he didn't do it.

So then the family must make a choice. Do they stay silent about what they've discovered, honour the sacrifice made by a woman they once despised, and let Bad Guy, who has caused them so much suffering, be punished for a crime he didn't commit? Or do they tell the police what they know, thus allowing Bad Guy to go free and (seemingly) nullifying Bad Gal's final attempt to atone for her misdeeds?

After deciding that the choice to keep silent must be a unanimous one, each member of the family states their opinion. One by one, each of them states that they want to keep silent and let Bad Guy go to prison. Finally the matriarch of the family speaks, casting the single opposing vote. She says, "I once betrayed my moral code because of love [helping her terminally ill husband end his own life]; I refuse to do it again because of hate." So the family tells the police, and Bad Guy goes free.

So is this an example of justice? Or mercy?

For Bad Guy, justice prevails: a man is accused of a crime, he's proven not to have committed that crime, and he's freed.

But Bad Guy also receives mercy. The family owe him nothing; he owes them reparations for all the ways he's violated them. But they make a choice that frees him of all obligation to make amends. He never pays and (from what we know of him) probably never will.

For Bad Gal, justice also prevails: she has done awful things, and she pays with her life to atone for them.

But there is mercy for her, too. The family has had every reason to reject, disbelieve, and mistrust her; yet they give her the gift of trust, of believing her when she says she's changed -- and she honours that trust. She ends up dying for people who have given her a chance. There's redemption in that.

Sometimes fiction is too black and white: the villains too villainous, the good guys too perfect, the outcomes too cut-and-dried. But good fiction reminds us how complex life can be -- how the black and white can blur into gray, how justice and mercy, love and hate, forgiveness and vengeance, can be all mixed together in a very complicated, and very human, package.