May 29, 2010
May 25, 2010
Beneath Vatican City
Join Pamela Binnings Ewen as she and her husband explore the excavations under St. Peter’s Basilica.
And look for her book SECRET OF THE SHROUD in September.
May 24, 2010
Our tiny whisper in eternity’s breath
Ten years ago, on April 23rd, I became a grandmother, and my life changed beyond measure.
Bailey Ramon. A gift from my past, brought into the present, to change the future. Son of my daughter Erin and her husband Andrae, he arrived on an Easter Sunday.
I drove over twelve straight hours, from Louisiana to Kansas, with my daughter Shannon. Ribbons of highway winding tighter and tighter around the wheels of my car until we reached him. Holding Bailey in my arms was and is the most astounding moment of my existence. Truly, it was as if God said, “This is why I created you. For this minute, to hold this treasure, to understand this love.”
Thirty days later, God took Bailey home.
Once again, my life changed, but this time beyond something I never wanted or expected to have to measure.
I thought I knew grief; after all, my parents had died before I reached the age of forty. I was wrong. Grief is picking out caskets not cribs. Grief is helping your daughter dress for her son’s funeral. Grief is sending flowers to your grandson’s grave on his birthday, not balloons to his party.
Bailey’s funeral was held in the church his parents married. He is buried next to his father’s grandfather. Near there is a bench on which Erin and Andrae had these words, attributed to Oswald Chambers, engraved: “We are born into this world, and we may never know to whose prayers our lives were the answer.”
In his precious days on earth, Bailey answered my prayer for forgiveness. Erin’s pregnancy healed a relationship between the two of us that had been broken for too many years. He answered my prayer for acceptance. Andrae, my son-in-law, is a compassionate, gentle, and courageous young man. He is black. We are not. I was raised in a household of prejudice that I never wanted my own children to experience. We lived Martin Luther King Jr.’s petition that we judge others by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Bailey taught me to appreciate the sacrament of the moment. His too brief time with us reminded me that none of us will know when will be called home. None of us should ever take for granted the time we have together. We don’t know the price we’ll have to pay for that until it’s too late. Some people in my daughter’s life chose not to acknowledge Bailey’s birth because of his father’s race. People who proclaim and upheld themselves to be Christians. People who never saw Bailey until the day he was buried.
Because of Bailey, I am reminded to live a life worthy of the reward of storming the gates of heaven at my death. Nothing, no nothing, will stop me from-once again-holding my grandson.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the sea..” Psalm 46:1-2.
.forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God…For our citizenship is in heaven…” Philippians 3;14, 20
May 17, 2010
May 16, 2010
Follow the journals of Pamela Ewen as she visits the Shroud of Turin
Preview of Secret of the Shroud
A frightened apostle in AD 33 – A tragic child in the 1950s – A slick, twenty-first century church leader…all linked by the secret of the Shroud of Turin, the purported burial cloth of Jesus…and by something more.
A corrupt, media-savvy clergyman, Wesley Bright, is out to destroy the Christian church of the God who has abandoned him. Likable, entertaining, his motives are well hidden. But as he seeks revenge, leading the church toward unknowing destruction, the mysterious Shroud of Turin stands in his way. Strange characters and clues emerge like shadows limned in mist as the most recent discoveries on the Shroud connect the pieces of a puzzle. When Wesley learns the ancient secret, he’s forced to confront a terrible choice-to keep the secret or expose it…and lose the power, wealth, and fame he’s won over the years.
At stake in this heart-throbbing tale is absolute truth.
TOUR THE SHROUD THROUGH PAMELA BINNINGS EWEN’S TRAVELS IN ITALY
My friend and writer, Pamela, is in Turin, Italy with her husband, Jimmy. I met Pamela through our local Southern Christian Writers Guild and the Northshore Literary Society that she and Deb Burst started.
Last year, Pam was a Christy finalist for her novel, The Moon In the Mango Tree. In September, her novel Walk Back the Cat will be re-released as Secret of the Shroud.
Here’s one of her recent posts:
“From Turin, Italy – May 13, 2010: Seeing the Shroud in the Cathedral at Turin was one of the most important moments in my life. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, the Shroud was restored in 2002 and controversy has raged over the results ever since. When I came out of the darkened room, I had tears in my eyes–tears of joy, but also tears of sorrow.”
You can follow Pam’s journey on her website : FAITH
You can pre-order her book HERE.
May 14, 2010
May 7, 2010
If only we could vacuum memories
I came home today and vacuumed. It’s what I do when it’s too hot to do my weed (as in the garden) therapy.
Both of these tasks can be accomplished with mindlessness, movement, and muteness. And they both provide a sense of completion. After not so much time, I can step back and actually see what I’ve accomplished.
This “job well done” satisfaction rarely happens in teaching. And with less than two weeks of school (including exam days), job well done is redefined as ending the year without poking my eyes out with a red pen.
For reasons primarily related to job security, I’ll not disclose why I arrived home today and wondered if I should consider a new profession, one for which I may be highly qualified. Like arranging the candy bars by the grocery store checkouts.
It’s not helping my emotional sanity thermometer that Sunday is Mother’s Day. My mother died over twenty years ago, and I miss, so deeply miss, being her daughter. The conversations of my friends discussing mom’s day gifts and gatherings bore a hole in my heart, and the memories of my mother spill out and soak themselves in longing.
When I read this poem by Billy Collins, I wish I could see her just long enough to say, “Thank you.”
The Lanyard
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
May 4, 2010
Today is National Teacher’s Day
And so I share one of my favorites. . . "YOU BEGIN" by Margaret Atwood |
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