January 29, 2012

I am a tad resistant to blogging, as illustrated by the fact that I’ve only added a couple of comments per year–and I have but one dear and loyal follower. But it is January 29 again–this year, there has been almost NO snow–and life is very different than last year, right now. Last year, I had just terrified myself by signing my first book contract. Now I am in my SIXTIETH year; my book has been published, and the molecules of my little brain have been rearranged accordingly. I have definitely scared myself by getting this book published; I have gotten this childhood (and sometimes childish) dream over the wall into freedom–and now I need to find out who I am because of it. People are starting to respond positively about “To See the Sky,” and my “vignettes of grace” (subtitle). I’m being asked to speak at women’s groups at church–and at other churches. And I am a writer, not a talker, and I’d prefer it if you’d all just read the book and see what I have to say, so I don’t have to come say it to your group or organization. But if I want to sell more than 12 books, I’m going to have to be Ms. Marketing of 2012–so here we go. I have a good start, lots of great contacts, and friends who’ve come out of the woodwork with fabulous ideas for how to sell a million copies–which would be just fine, thank you, plus 10% of the proceeds–my tithe–goes to the Community Soup Kitchen in Morristown, New Jersey. Now I need to get Judith over the wall and into the modern world of book publishing. It, apparently, ain’t for sissies.

But–and I’m forgetting this too often–it isn’t just about me and a book. The book is about my life with the God who I love and believe in. It’s about how I found Him in the rubble of a lot of other dreams. The purpose of the book is to help others as they contemplate their lives while sitting on top of their own stashes of inexplicable rubble. I can follow God into this morass; He promises to be with me, never forsake me, restore my soul, give me a purpose and a life worth living. So here, world (well, for now, just dear Caitlin!) is Judith Hugg, authoress and general menace to polite society. Here am I, Lord. Bring me.

(Sending me would mean I’m on my own, which I’m not.)

…and now it’s SUMMER

I was just writing about a January snow, and now it is July, the Fourth is long past and it is getting hotter and hotter. Today allegedly set a record; in Newark, New Jersey, it hit 105. Frankly, I would prefer the snow to this! I feel more trapped in the house when, every time I go outside, I sweat like I’m Niagara Falls, and feel like the wilted porch candle which will be lovely for Halloween now, melted all over its hot holder.

God makes all the seasons and promised that He’ll never rip them out from under us (“summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease”–Forget this end of the world stuff!), and there is obvious good purpose for each one: one’s for planting and growing crops, one’s for harvesting, and a couple are for rest and regrouping and letting the roots dig deep. I like the variety of the seasons–but there are downsides for me. Like the “seasons of my life,” some of them involve sitting around waiting, some involve intense growth (ouch!), some involve being the simple fertile soil for God’s creative ideas.

Someone made the kind-of sweet mistake today of asking me whether the woman I was with was my daughter, and her children, my grandchildren. I had a second of looking around–who, what?–and then my friend corrected her, saying that it was a nice idea. Yes, I am old enough to be her Mom, and her little ones could be…but (fortunately for the planet) I was never called to have offspring. It pointed out to me that, despite the buckets of Oil of Olay used over many years, I am FIFTY-EIGHT years old; I am in the grandma years, and there’s no turning back. I am not old yet, but I’m looking OLD straight in the eyeballs, and it’s a little scary, a little humiliating, a little, well, sudden. Wasn’t I just in college…oh, it was forty years ago. Didn’t I just meet Tom not so long ago…twenty-six years ago. I am no longer young, and it feels like I’m losing a power in society that I once had when I had the title “young person.” American society doesn’t respect its elders. It tries to take better care of elders than in previous generations, but grey hair, baldness and the restaurant conversations mostly about medications and hip surgeries give us away, and we are not looking as promising as we used to. Welcome to my season.

Seasons come and go. This is a new one that I haven’t quite accepted because it’s not really in full-bloom yet for me to get my head and heart around it. But I will. I’ll put on the appropriate clothing and shoes for it and I’ll probably rail against it as much as possible, and maybe I’ll learn to dance without worrying about how idiotic I might look. I’ll get the hang of this aging thing and become Judith 59.0. My hair’s still brunette (no it’s not colored, thanks!) and I can still haul cinderblocks and mix cement and walk pretty good distances before my legs feel like Jello. I will not enjoy every moment of my new season of aging, but I will get the hang of it and report back to you. If I haven’t given up by now, I guess I’m in it for the long haul. I’m going to be one cranky, obstinate old lady. Look out, young world.

Let it snow, let it snow…

It is January, and I don’t remember seeing this much snow around me since I was four when perhaps there wasn’t as much snow, but I was shorter and it looked like the Alps to me then. There is a neighbor who has created a 15′ tall igloo for his little girls with a snow slide down the side of it. At the end of our cul-de-sac is a huge mountain of snow; I can’t imagine it ever melting away to nothing, though I know it will. Our beagle went into frozen shock when he first came out the morning after this latest storm; the snow was over his little furry head and I think he was wondering what we had gotten him into. This is our sixth storm of the season–with another coming on Tuesday. Beware, little beagle.

Before the latest storm that dumped 12″ on the Northeast, I was putting birdseed in the feeders for the squirrels (they always get there first and I’ve quit trying to remedy the situation) and next to the bird bath in a little dent in the snow cover was a brave stalk of snowdrop; it was only about 1/2 inch tall, but it was green and glorious in its little plot to foil winter. It hides there now, buried under a foot of snow, next to its tulip brothers and daffodil sisters, waiting for the least bit of warmth and sun and encouragement to emerge. The cold and dark and blasting wind of the winter is not the last word. Underneath is God’s secret weapon for us all: resurrection. So let it snow. Bring it on. That snowdrop–that little gem of Easter-like triumph–is coming soon. I just wish it would hurry.

Here Goes the End of the World…again

Harold Egbert Camping, the 88-year-old full-time volunteer President of Family Radio (technically Family Stations, begun in 1958), might need to consider retirement fairly soon, although, according to his precise and careful calculations, it won’t matter much soon because Jesus is returning on May 21, 2011. (His precise and careful calculations also had Jesus swinging through the clouds to a planet near you in September of 1994 but, oopsie, now it’s definitely going to be in May of 2011.) He is quite the impressive Bible scholar having earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Berkeley in 1942 and running his own construction business (cleverly named Camping Construction) before entering the, um, ministry. Church watchdogs may not be able to dig up much technical dirt against him since he doesn’t take a paycheck from Family Radio, but he is still quite the rouser of rabble. He hosts a live call-in program on radio, television, and on the Internet, interpreting life, the universe and everything, and what’s on most people’s radar that distinguishes him from the other egotistical, slightly addled  Bible “experts” of our heady age is the fact that he’s telling Christians that the “abomination of desolation” has already entered the church, Christ’s presence has been removed from our churches, the “church age” is over, and basically if you’re hanging out in a church on a Sunday, you’re an Antichrist-worshiping Satanist with whipped cream and a cherry on top. He is persuading Christians—and many are actually buying this, especially many from Camping’s former church of choice, the Christian Reformed denomination—that, since the church age is at an end (which of course he proves by citing all kinds of scary stuff from Ezekiel, Revelation and other exciting Bible stuff, kind of like when Paul Stookey was on Johnny Carson and set about to prove that you can make the national anthem into a song about pot smoking if you emphasize certain words and say it just right…), you’d better not be caught near a church, and, oh, by the way, you’d better not be meeting in those home fellowship groups you were meeting in for a while there (which he said was okay) because they’re too much like going to a church, and God hates that now, since “the Scriptures have been completed,” and church is just evil, evil, evil.

Family Radio takes great pride (which is always a good thing for Christians to do) in the fact that they are strictly faithful to the Word of God (however Harold plays with it); they used to use that passion to build up local churches and spread the love of Christ, formerly known as “spreading the Gospel.” Now their minions are encouraged (in thirty languages, all over the world) to hone in on God’s judgment of the church, to watch for the signs of the bitter end behind every bush, to teach their children about the Lake of Fire where Grandma is going to live forever in agony because she bakes pies for the church bazaar with the Lutheran Ladies Guild. And, by the by, you can get a free correspondence course in “Bible Hebrew and Bible Greek” and lots of free copies of Harold Egbert Camping’s swell books.

Family Radio says they’ve discovered there’s a “great amount of biblical evidence” that we’re “very close to the end.” I’d say they’re participating in that end with their very own “false prophet,” a sad, scary old geezer with a blind ego and a massive worldwide venue for spewing his bizarre prophesies and confusing a lot of gullible people. He’s just one more on the list of egotistical religious-types who’ve  set themselves up above the rest of us by “discovering” fabulous gems of Scriptures that only they are privy to, that they’re chosen to divulge to us poor saps, and that you’d better heed. The love of Christ, the majesty of God and His grace, is lost in the rubble of Harold’s brilliant interpretations. Take heed, indeed.

all exits

At Madison Square Garden, there are signs everywhere saying “All Exits are Final.” I get it that once I leave the Tom Petty concert (which I wanted to do when a profoundly drunken young man entered, proclaiming Buddy Guy to be Prince and screaming “I love that guy!”), I can’t come back in without essentially buying a new ticket because there’s no other way to identify that I belong (acording to MSG). I am happy that the God of the Bible doesn’t seem to have those signs around the Pearly Gates (I used to know a woman named Pearly Gates, but that is another story for another time.) and that I can scream and rail and be an idiot and still have the benefit of His good graces. Even when I exit, I still have the hand-stamp, still have the plastic bracelet, still have the sign of the cross on my life somewhere. I’m guessing that my loving God would prefer that I not scream at Him and rail and be a general nuisance and a constant idiot. I’ve learned to do better. Well, mostly. But sometimes I still bay at the moon, and sometimes I still rail and blather, and sometimes I still need admittance though I have done less than nothing to deserve it. Exits are not final. The final Word on my life is named Love. Thank God.