Our Weekly Devotionals are created by our staff and members to inspire reflections and conversation.
Sing!
When I got COVID, followed by years of Long COVID, one of the things I lost was my ability to sing like I had before. I didn’t realize what a core piece of my identity “singer” was until it was gone. So, last year, with the intention of reclaiming this part of myself, I joined the Kansas City Women’s Chorus.
It was a struggle. Fatigue had stolen my energy, so I could not stand or even sit upright for all of the rehearsals. My lung capacity was not the same, so singing itself was a strenuous physical activity. My vocal chords were not the same, so my tone and range felt foreign to me in my own body. My brain was not the same, so I had to learn a whole new way to memorize music.
Olympics: Ultimate Gestalt Experience
When Jimmy and Jaminda asked me to speak at Micah’s service, I was honored. I wanted to include his love of WarHammer 40K lore. WarHammer is a complicated board game played with plastic model armies. Micah’s army is called Orks. From the WarHammer website, “Orks have a collaborative, collective psychic ability, meaning if enough Orks believe something is true, then it will actually become so, brought into realspace through the power of the Immaterium by their gestalt psychic ability.” I didn’t focus on the world “gestalt” then, but knew I would write about it here later.
Broccoli and Cheese, and Butterflies
The crackling energy of the five-year old girl and the three-year-old dog bounding through my house reached a point that the house itself was shaking. So, I used the tried-and-true grandparenting technique of suggesting an after-dinner walk, hoping we could channel the energy, use it up, and come home calmer.
By the time we had been around the block and were heading back to the house, the sun was low in the sky and the heat and that deep calm of a summer evening was starting to settle in to the neighborhood, as well as each of us. Our pace was now lazy, and contented.
Music Heals
Early this summer, I met an old friend for dinner and a show. The tickets were from a mutual friend who wasn’t able to attend, so I didn’t know what I was in for. To my great surprise, the “show” turned out to be a profoundly moving conversation about racism and division, and how music can be a source of healing and unity.
The KC Symphony event featured Director Michael Stern hosting Yo-Yo Ma (the one and only), and Atlanta-based composer, conductor, pianist, and educator Joel Thompson, best known for his work for choir and orchestra, Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. The third guest was a promising musician and recent Staley High School graduate. We might never have known of Ralph Yarl if not for the horrific 2023 shooting that put him in the news as yet another victim of a racist (expletive deleted) bully with a gun.
Connections
A few months ago, my 94 year old father got a new smartphone. Since then, calls to him usually go to voicemail, texts go unread, and he frequently tells me that the phone is broken and "won't answer". Two trips to T-mobile confirmed operator error, as I suspected. To help, I activated google voice on his phone and pasted a sign on his kitchen cabinets with "Hey Google" steps so he could use his voice instead of his old, arthritic fingers. These instructions go unheeded, as you might imagine, and our ongoing phone lessons feel a little like Groundhog Day.
Life is Not a Line
I spent the first part of summer listening to Neil Young. His entire output. All forty-seven of his studio albums. And around thirty-six soundtracks and live albums. Neil has more albums than he has years, which is saying something as he is now seventy-eight and still recording and playing live.
I could easily write a book about Neil Young’s music at this point. And anyone who has been around me or who has been in my operating room or in my car has heard enough Neil Young to be either intrigued or irritated. But a few hundred words aren’t enough to scratch the surface of his life or his music.
Mad at God
You could see the years’ worth of weariness written on her face. Since last July, she’s been steadfast in her vigil at her mother’s bedside. Holding her water bottle to her lips, singing to her, holding her hand, rubbing her arms, talking in a hushed tone so as not to startle her. Arriving at the care center feeling down and leaving feeling despondent.
During one of our long talks, my mother asked me, “Why do you think God is letting this happen to her? She is neither alive nor dead. Is this some kind of test? I don’t want anything to do with a God that ‘tests’ me like this.”
Potential
About five months ago, I was offered my first job as a fully-fledged psychologist. I was thrilled; applying, interviewing, and negotiating were nerve-wracking, and I was relieved to have secured a stable job after nearly 8 years of training. The next months included various bureaucratic forms and requirements which were both annoying and reassuring. The job was mine.
And then, three days into my honeymoon, I received a foreboding email, asking for a meeting with the head of the department and myself. Unwilling to spend the rest of my vacation in dreadful anticipation, I took the call from my hotel room. Bad news – budget issues. They can’t hire me after all.
Homo Sapiens
One afternoon this week while walking through the Paris Metro, I began to think about the core nature of our species. What are we, and what have we evolved to do most fundamentally? What beyond eating and ensuring the future of our species is most fundamental to our animal nature? Love.
Love is that complex mess of emotions which complicates the rest of our nature. Love is what blinds us to our faults and awakens us to the beauty in others. But other animals can love, so what can we do that is particular to our species?
The Way
A lot of us are navigating times of transition, and the way forward seems impossible and terrifying at worst and uncertain at best. As a person who prefers action, the security of good plan, and a clear view of the path ahead, I don’t like the waiting times, those liminal spaces where grief over what’s being lost looms large, easily overshadowing any hope or excitement over what could possibly come next.
Come Watch the Show
I read a Cup of Jo essay a few weeks ago that has stuck with me. The point of the essay is that although there might be several people attending the performance of our lives, there are only a few who have season tickets. Perhaps our parents, our partners, some friends and co-workers have a front seat ticket. In the essay, a women talked about how when her mom died, she felt as if she’d lost her audience; a person who cared if she wore a red sweater or the blue one. Someone who knew about her love of dahlias and her chocolate allergy. The article says, “Feeling witnessed, feeling known, feeling the opposite of alone in this world. How beautiful.”
The Things We Can’t See
I didn’t see the northern lights a few weeks ago when they were visible in so many unusual parts of the world. My sister and her family did though – in Virginia. She sent the photos they took, with a note that when they first looked up at the sky, they couldn’t see the lights there. But when they held their cell phone cameras up, the remarkable streaks of color of the Northern Lights were visible right over their house.
Spring
This morning on my walk, I was hit by the fragrance of wildflowers. It may have been honeysuckle, but it smelled like jasmine. I was immediately taken back to the scent of spring when I lived in Seville decades ago. There, flowers bloomed everywhere, and the lightly perfumed breeze was intoxicating--especially in the evenings after the diesel buses stopped running and the din of cars faded. It was a little like that on my walk this morning...a lush green trail instead of cobblestones, but with the sun peeking through trees, the birds chirping and the creek moving by.
Bird Watcher
A pair of mourning doves has taken up residence under our front hedge. I almost didn’t notice them, since they were so well camouflaged against the concrete backdrop of the porch, nestled in last year’s faded mulch. Early in the week, when I saw them for the first time, I pressed pause on the morning newscast coming through my earbuds and tried to get a good angle for a picture. I was afraid of scaring them away, but they probably would have posed there for hours if I didn’t get too, too close or make too much of a ruckus. They were completely unbothered by me.
Rest and Heal
I’ve been sick much of this year. Don’t worry, nothing serious. Nothing permanent. A cold after Christmas. Then at my mom’s 80th birthday party in late January, I contracted the worst case of food poisoning or lactose intolerance or something that I’ve ever had. I lost eight pounds that night and it took several days to recover. Another cold before and after a February vacation. And then in late March my body kind of sputtered along with a mild virus before the bottom fell out a week later. Febrile for two weeks, weak and tachycardic for nearly a month. One virus on another on another is my best guess.
Generation Gap
“What concerns do you have about the future of this generation of teenagers?” he asked me, while holding the phone up to my mouth with the Voice Memos app recording my every word. Casey, my 15-year-old son, had an assignment for his sociology class in which he had to interview someone from the Baby Boomer generation about their thoughts and concerns about Gen Z and Alpha. For the record, I was born in 1982, which puts me right at the end of Gen X and at the beginning of the Millennials, so I am not in the age group for the assignment, but when your kid waits until last minute to do his assignment, we stretch the rules a little. Ironically enough, this has me a little worried about the time management skills of his generation, but I digress.
Commitment
Usually, I struggle to know what to write for a devotional. But as I write this one, my wedding is a week away. It’s an obvious choice to reflect on the nature of the commitment I am preparing to make. And I have been—in the few moments between work and wedding planning and life—thinking about what it is to promise another person my devotion and love for the rest of my days on this earth.
Eclipse
Today when you read this, a total solar eclipse will cross North America from Sinola in Mexico to Newfoundland in Canada. Those of you who were in Kansas City on 22 August 2017 will remember the total solar eclipse that passed over our own city well. For me, it was cloudy when the eclipse occurred, yet the effect on the nature which surrounded those of us watching together was profound as all of the nocturnal fauna started to appear from their daytime slumber and chirp and sing as though night had come early for them.
Generational Hope
Sometimes we get out of our way and find hope.
It’s six thirty in the morning and I let the dogs out, stepping on the patio to take an extra breath of the newly humid air. Grass and other familiar smells tickle my nose, birds chirp with surprise at the sudden seasonal change. Like kindling, smoking then at once beginning to flame.
In Chillicothe later that day I head outside at lunch, intending to do a twenty-minute Peloton walk, but it’s too cold, too windy, too cloudy. Fits and starts, but spring is surely coming.
A Season of Hope
Caleb discovered his love of baseball just as the Royals became truly awful, again. That has not stopped him from tracking every statistic, following every player, and understanding all of the trades. He loves Royals baseball. So, last week we went to Phoenix, AZ to see two Royals spring training games. We watched them win against the Guardians in Goodyear, AZ and went to a home game in Surprise, AZ where they beat the Cincinnati Reds. Bobbie Witt, Jr. hit a home run, and Caleb was very excited.