Monday, June 25, 2007

Extra Ordinary Heroes

Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed,
but win out in the end because they've stayed true
to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.
- Kevin Costner

I have spent the past two weeks focusing most of my waking hours helping to get ready for and execute our church's Vacation Bible School (VBS) Program. The first of the past two weeks was spent in final preparations and finishing all of the decorations and backdrops, the later was the actual week of VBS with over sixty children participating. I was one of two women in charge of the crafts station. I love VBS! I always look forward to it as one of my favorite weeks of the year. Perhaps that is because I cannot have any children of my own and relish any opportunity I can to share in the lives of other people's children. To be able to see the world through the eyes of a child is an amazing gift. Anyway, this year's theme was sports - "Game Day Central: Where Heroes Are Made!" According to our VBS lesson plans "True Heroes":

  1. Obey God even when it's not easy.
  2. Do their best in everything.
  3. Believe in Jesus and follow God's plan.
  4. Put others first.
  5. Tell others about Jesus.

Last year was my first year helping out with VBS at my current church after a several year personal VBS hiatus. In my thank you gift from the director (a small book) she wrote, "You are one of the most amazing people I know! Your gifts and abilities are evident in so many areas and I thank you so much for your extraordinary help and support and leadership." My inital reaction to this was, "If I am one of the most amazing people she knows, it's definitely way past time for her to go out and meet more people!" I am just a person who says they don't like pie when there isn't enough to go around.

We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too. - Helen Hayes
A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when there isn’t enough to go around. – Edgar Watson Howe, American Journalist and Author

Needless to say, all of this has gotten me to think about the "Heroes" in my own life...who they are, what defines them as people, why I admire them so much and how the examples of their lives sustain me in my own and have shaped me as a person. Amidst all of my current life changes, part of defining my heroes, I think, is to re-establish those roots which will give me the necessary continuity to support this new growth.

Here are my thoughts on "Amazing People" - Amazing people are not flawless, all of humanity has faults and short-comings - just different ones. Depending on our perspective we see the rest of the world as having either many more or much fewer problems that our own, but I believe that God is the original designer of the "No Child Left Behind" concept (Unlike the system created by our current U.S. public education bureaucracies though, His plan is flawless). He has created a unique set of challenges for each us, our own personalized "life curriculum" so to speak. Amazing people earn that title (in my book) not by being flawless but by how they respond to the work of God in their lives, how they view and respond to the world around them, and how they view and respond to the unique sets of challenges that God gives to each of us as exercises in becoming the people he created us to be.

I decided to dedicate some time to reflecting on the Extra Ordinary People in my life that I call "Heroes." Today's hero is Karl Bader. In the picture below we are dancing at the wedding reception of a mutual friend - Karl is, of course, the fifty-something man and I am the little girl of seven or eight.

I will highlight my heroes in no particular order, but as one of the changes that I am staring in the face is the prospect of selling our modest, cookie-cutter suburban house that my husband and I had built four years ago and returning to apartment living (which we haven't done since we moved to our first rented house in July of 1993), I think of Karl and find comfort in knowing that the "American Dream" doesn't have to be about owning property and a house.

Karl E. Bader was an extraordinary man. He was born August 08, 1926 in Stuttgart, Germany and as a teenager was required to serve in Hitler's Nazi army during World War II. After the war, the conditions in Germany were so terrible that he decided to immigrate to the United States, by way of Canada. At the age of twenty-five in 1952, he immigrated to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada where he rented a single room in a boarding house and worked as a brick layer although by profession he was an architect. It was a very difficult time to be a German immigrant in the post-World War II era. He later sent for his wife to join him and they had their first son while still living in the rented room of the boarding house. Eventually they had a second son and moved to a small apartment. In 1959, they completed their migration to America and came to make their permanent home in the Greater Buffalo Area in New York State where he began working as an architect and a few months later joined a well-respected architectual firm in Williamsville, NY and made a 31-year career there and they became United States citizens.

Although I thought the biographical details were somewhat of a pre-requisite, they do little to tell the story of what earns Karl the title of "Hero," that comes from the quiet way in which he lived his life. Although a successful architect who could have easily made home ownership a reality for his family, he made a conscious, deliberate choice to live out the majority of their days in a rented apartment. He did not want to be consumed with property ownership and all that that entails. On days that weather permitted, he chose to commute by bicycle as opposed to car. Karl started every day by going to his church to pray before going to work or anything else.

Karl was a man who had the ability to see and foresee needs in the lives of others and in the community around him and then quietly went about helping to meet those needs. He touched and changed lives every day without any fanfare or recognition. He truly was Christ-like in his caring for others. He was filled with an inner joy that only comes from knowing our Lord on a personal level. During his career the main thrust of his work was on the design of rehabilitation projects and additions for many local school districts as well as some fire halls and branch banks. He was also instrumental in the design and overseeing of a major wing added to the Niagara Luthern Home and Rehabilitation Center in Buffalo and served for many years on their Board of Directors, being elected it's president in 1991.

In my own life, my father died less than two months after my sixth birthday. Karl was one of the many men in my wider circle of extended family and family friends who served as a strong male role model during my formative years. Karl and his family attended the same church as my own family and along with six other families - the Lawlers, the Hoffs, the Barenthalers, the Simmonses, (and later after the Simmonses moved away) the Belzes and the Dryers, we composed "The Family Life Committee" that was in charge of not only the weekly coffee hour, but planning and executing all of the parish dinners and fellowship events throughout the year. For all of the 1970's and most of the 1980's this group of people was more than a "committee" - they laughed together, played together, cried together and prayed together both inside and outside of the church. They shared each others' joys and burdens. These were the type of friends who really could call upon one another at 2:30 in the morning, if a need arose. If they were analyzed by modern-day, formalized church growth strategists, they would have probably been labeled a "small group." All of my adult life I have been longing to find that kind of relationship and friendship that was shared by those adults in that time. Oh, how I envy what they had! However, I am not so sure such friendships are an achieveable goal in today's contemporary society and culture.

"Baaarrrrb," I can still hear him say in his thick, gutteral German accent, accompanied by a big, bear hug. I cannot reproduce it, but I can hear it in my head. He always made it a point to spend some time in conversation with me each week after the worship service and even as a child he would ask me intelligent questions and really listen to my answers. He made me feel important. One of my fondest childhood memories is going to the Bader's home (yes, it was a small apartment, but it was still very much a "home" in every sense of the word) on Christmas Eve between the worship services and it was filled with good scents, sounds and visions. His wife, Isolde, would make every kind of German Christmas cookie imaginable as well as some German soft-pretzels and they would have a fresh, live Christmas tree lit with small, real burning candles placed in special holders on the boughs (Karl loved to amaze his friends by placing one of the boughs in the flame to prove that a fresh, well-watered tree would not burn). All of their closest friends and those who had no other other place to share in the joy of the holiday season would gather in their small living/dining room just about elbow to elbow and share in fellowship and sing Christmas Carols from booklets that Karl had put together - typed up the words and photocopied (although I guess it was mimeographed in those days, remember the "pretty" mimeograph blue?) and stapled together and we would all sing out in hearty, harmonized, a cappella voices.

When I think of adjectives to decribe Karl Bader, some that come to mind are intelligent, humble, compassionate, prayerful, generous, righteous, understanding, empathetic, genuine . . . In the words of my sister, Patti, "a true reflection of God." I don't know - to attempt to describe in words would be in some way boxing and labeling and I believe one just cannot do that with people. It is so limiting. Although I strongly believe in the power of words and this blog is somewhat dedicated to that power of words, there are still some places that even words cannot go, some things that remain unexpressable. So, I will leave you with this quote I found:

People ask me to describe a hero, I often fail at it. You see words are hollow things, they carry small meaning. Words lack the substance to do a real hero full justice. Real heros must be watched and seen to be understood. We see and hear about all of the people portrayed as heros - sports heros, entertainment heros, media heros, and so on, people whose charmed arrogance is just under the shine. Words and adjectives can describe these people with ease. They are not true heros and never could be, they are void . . . - Keith Howerton (Jacob's Dad)

Karl died in May of 1996 at the age of 69 of ALS - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (more commonly known as "Lou Gherig's Disease") -- his funeral was standing room only. I have been to a lot of funerals in my thirty-five years, but only two others were standing room only. To live one's life in such a way that your funeral is "standing room only" - that's what it's all about!

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Extra Ordinary Change

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown

I remember the day I took this picture. It was a Sunday afternoon this past October (2006) when I felt the first sting of the winds of change blowing upon my face; in comparison to what I have experienced since then, however, these were nothing. In fact I even welcomed the breeze after a long, hot summer! For the past fifteen years, Octobers have mostly been an auto-pilot blur for my husband and I due to the nature of the work he has been doing and for all but this past one, the work I had been doing with him. This October (with my husband's blessing) I stepped out on my own adventure and began a new work or at least a work in a new place. Still though, October, as always, was a stressful month. In an attempt to divert some of that stress, the one Sunday in which I took the picture above, we each realized the need for some alone time and connect with God time. My husband took off for the afternoon to "do his thing" and I grabbed the camera to have the rare (for me) opportunity to capture the beauty of God's autumn showcase, with a limited showing. I don't have very much formal training or education in art, but I do okay I guess (or at least people tell me that I do). There are many things that I wish I could do better in expressing the pictures that are in my mind's eye but I do not yet have the skills to do so. The important thing for me though is that I have found my attempts at creative expression to be my time alone communing with God. I really feel as though when I am involved in a work of creative expression that I am a mere conduit for God exercising his gift to the world. It is also a time when God speaks to me, we have long conversations like two old friends. When I am involved in creative expression, I lose myself and my problems, and time stands still.

Last night I went to bed in one of my bouts of despair regarding all of this imminent change, fear about the tomorrows yet unseen, but this morning somehow, I awoke with hope. If you have been praying for me, thank you!!! thank you!!! thank you!!! beyond measure!!! The words that were on my lips as I rolled out of bed this morning were from Saint Matthew 6:25-34 ~
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today
and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Oh, okay so I answer one of my own questions....uncertainty and trust can really not co-exist! I did know that on an intellectual level somewhere in the back of my head, but I wasn't to that point yet in this particular journey. A friend asked me the other day after I had shared a little bit of my concerns if I was doing well, to which I replied " 'well' is a relative term isn't it? I wish I were in a different place right now but some things are beyond our control..." My friend's reply was, "...these things ARE under Someone's control (even if it's not ours)" in referring to our heavenly father.

Yes, he is right! Things are under God's control. I just have to keep reminding myself of that. I saved the text exchange in my phone so I can reread the words when my own trust begins to falter. Hmmm, it is time to start 'pulling myself up by my bootstraps.' I am a fighter by nature and when I regain my bearings again after being knocked to the ground by the initial blow, I usually am pretty resilient. So here is my quote for today...

"Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. " ~Pauline R. Kezer

My task at hand for now, the immediate future, is to identify my roots, the things on which I can rely to give me strength and continuity while these new branches are budding. It is not as though if called upon, I could not identify "my roots." However, I think I need to take the time to make a conscience, concerted effort to revisit those things that have brought me through the huge trials, tribulations and changes of my past. Roots need water and nutrients from the soil to produce and support strong, healthy new growth. These last few months I have felt as though God has enrolled me in a graduate level fortitude class and I've been struggling. It's a difficult course, but I think I will ultimately come out with a passing grade. God is not one of those instructors who likes to put the objective for the day up on the board as you enter the room though. Part of the challenge is He kind of leaves it up to you to figure out the objective on your own. This makes it more difficult, but I guess if it were easy, I wouldn't need to be here. There would be no lesson to be learned.

Trust. Ruthless Trust. I can do this. Okay so here is my next children's literature reference from Watty Piper's The Little Engine that Could, "I think I can, I think I can." Growing up, I had the book and record version and it was one of my favorites. I would listen to it over and over and over again. To this day, I can practically recite the story by memory. Looking back, maybe there was a reason for that. God knew me even before I was formed in my mother's womb.

If you would attain to what you are not yet,
you must always be displeased by what you are.
For where you are pleased with yourself
there you have remained.
Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
~Saint Augustine

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Extra Ordinary Courage

Lord, I am feeling the edges of my faith
I am aware that I have stretched this hope
as far as I could dare.
I am in a place of great need;
My trust is faltering.
My prayers are before you
and I long for a glimpse of your answer.
I know your heart towards me
and, in that, there is no doubt,
however I long to see your hand
gently move across the days to come.
I have no more answers,
my plans have come to naught,
my soul is tired.
I long to see your hand
gently move across my broken life.


I found this poem/prayer earlier this spring one day when I was feeling completely lost and just searching for meaning out there somewhere and I randomly clicked on Wild Grace's blog from another site and there it was just waiting for me. If you like poetry, this is most definitely a site to check out. Gracie, Billy, and Neils live in Australia and write some great poetry on their blog and have some great photography too.

Ahhhh! UUUgggghhhhh! GRRRRRRRRR! One month, one post. Second month, four posts - actually all in the course of a week. I thought I was doing good as a blogger, off to a good start. I thought I had found my groove. Then, my world began to crumble around me. I haven't written since because I have been at a loss for words of expression. It is as though God read my previous posts in May and said, "Okay, Barbara, let's see what you're really made of...if you can 'put your money where your mouth is.' Are these just fancy words on the page or do you really, truly believe them and can you live them?? Yeah, and while we're at it, how is that mustard seed size faith doing for you?? You want it to grow?? Trust me and only me! Hang on tight 'cause we're about to go for a wild ride...let the journey begin! You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?" In the 1980's REM experienced "The end of the world as we know it" and felt fine...but, I'm just not sure I feel so fine!

When I arrived at college, ummm, some seventeen years ago, one of my first purchases at the bookstore was a small poster to adorn the wall of my dorm room. It pictured a huge glorious old maple tree in all of its autumn splendor dressed in shades of red and orange and yellow and at the bottom right hand corner in relatively small print were the words, "It is only through change that we grow." I absolutely love autumn! As far back as I can remember, it has been my all-time favorite season of year, so the poster caught my eye immediately. Also, being bright-eyed, ambitious, not yet jaded and ready to take on the world at the "ripe old age" of eighteen, the words spoke to my heart too. I was ready to embrace change and grow. Bring it on! I loved a challenge and an adventure. Silly me! Change is for kids. Now at almost twice the age that I was then, I have grown to fear change, at least change that is not self-imposed. I've done quite well with the self-imposed kind in recent years as I've alluded to in my previous post. I still have the poster... somewhere...I think it may be in a box in the garage. I guess it is time to find it and put it back up on my wall. Change that is not self-imposed, takes extra ordinary courage for sure.

It is not as though this imminent change should have caught me by such surprise. It has been lurking around the fringes of my life for most of the past year, well at least the past nine months anyway...lying in wait for the perfect time to strike, when my defenses were down. This past Friday though, when it boldly made its presence known and announced as if a child who has been chosen as "it", engaged in playing a passionate game of hide-and-seek, finishes counting and yells, "Ready or not, here I come!," I was not as prepared as I should have been. I wanted to throw my own child-like tantrum in return and say, "Wait, wait! I'm not ready yet. It's not fair! I didn't have enough time to find a good hiding place. Close your eyes and count again! Give me one more chance, please?" Oh if I close my eyes now and shut out all of the present day distractions, I am in my childhood neighborhood again and it is dusk on a beautiful summer evening and we are playing "hide-and-seek" all across the yards of Tamark Court.

One of my gifts (or so I have been told by more than one person) is that of providing encouragement for others. I truly don't believe that I do anything more special in offering my words of support than what should be the norm as a human living in community with others, but apparently my ideals are not so "normal." Finding the best in others and helping them to bring that out and to stay connected to God, our creator and redeemer, has just always been second nature to me. "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Sometimes though, I am not so good at encouraging myself.

So, for whatever it is worth, here are my quotes for this day, perhaps in the days ahead I will be able to write myself into en-courage-ment:

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself. ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ " - Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn By Living, 1960

I think with non-self-imposed change comes a certain amount of grieving and with that grieving comes crying. Is it okay to cry and be afraid before you take on courage?? Does that mean that you are less of a person of faith?? Less trusting of God as the ultimate artist painting "the big picture" on canvas of your life?? Does prayer change things or just help you to cope better with the changes that are inevitable in God's will?? Can you be uncertain and still have trust in God or can the two not really co-exist?? These days I have more questions than answers. I could fill an entire post with all of my questions, but I am not sure who would answer them. "Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison." I can't do it alone God! Have mercy on me.

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
-- Isaiah 41:10

Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and courageous.
Do not be terrified;
do not be discouraged,
for the LORD your God
will be with you wherever you go.
-- Joshua 1:9

If by chance anyone reads this, please pray for me.