Wordless histories and communion bread.

A poem and a short memoir selection.

Lost Valley (Dum spiro spero)

Anywhere the water rushes
it shapes a story
on the land.

But who can share the tales its worrying ways
carve in rock,
whittle on bone over centuries?

And who can know the night wind
galloping through the valley,
sweeping leaf from limb?

In the surging clamor 
of raving bottle brush branches,
the hushed roar of reaching pines,

I am suddenly surrounded by sound.
Carried out of time.
Caught up

above, 
where breathless star shimmer breaks
into wild exhilaration.

---

From the memoir project. Just a short snippet this week.

On church:

Because my dad was the pastor at the church, I spent a lot of time there. While other kids could skip a service or two, we were there from when the doors opened until the last person left. The plus side was that our parents were distracted, and we could run laps around the building while the worship band warmed up. Sometimes, I was given a chore to keep me busy, like preparing for the communion service. To a kid raised in an Anglican church, this sounds like sacrilege. Priests bless the bread and actual wine, and a team of adults, called the altar guild, drape ironed white linens over the altar and light candles. But I was raised by teetotaling second-generation Pentecostals, so I was oblivious to this level of reverence.

I'd head up to the kitchen, fill a long-necked squeezy bottle with grape juice, pour the Lord's blood in single servings into tiny plastic cups, and then dump a bunch of tasteless blanched wafers into a couple of brass plates. We did go through a short season of sharing a crusty, and delicious common loaf of bread instead of the wafers. Then a few of my friends ruined things by choosing the Lord's body as their post-service snack, carb-loading for their next lap around the sanctuary while their parents earnestly prayed.

Some kids get bent out of shape about having to go to church. I was usually happy to go. We sang loud and upbeat songs, and people would often laugh and make comments to my dad while he was preaching. We'd all spent the week trudging around in the wind and snow from school or to work, so being together felt like a reprieve. Sunday mornings were warm and noisy. The adults had their coffees, and we kids ate our sugar cubes.

As you can imagine, nobody could come dressed too fancy because of the sheer amount of work it required. Families would come trooping in the front door, draped in scarves, mittens, and hats, clods of snow falling from their boots, and they'd spend the next 10 minutes unraveling from their winter gear. Our foyer was long and narrow, and an entire wall was dedicated to coat racks that were always so heavily laden with parkas that toddlers got lost in them.

The church had a huge, old-fashioned baptismal tank behind the pulpit. It looked like a small, carpeted platform covered by a bunch of wood planks. A set of small steps led up to the edge, and if you pushed aside a few planks, you'd look down into a deep fiberglass tank. It mainly stayed dry and empty, except when we played hide-and-seek, or my dad dunked people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which was certainly the holier of the two uses.

---