tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38205247905635500022024-03-05T04:04:14.666-08:00Wandering and WonderingAbbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.comBlogger260125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-41262052356366070012014-08-21T15:12:00.000-07:002014-08-21T15:14:49.899-07:00The Flood: When the Waters Recede<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We face a great challenge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Information comes to us, more often than not, in a flood.</b> It comes rushing in, sometimes with no warning. There's no way to prepare for this flood - no, you find yourself trapped in the middle of it, thigh-deep in speculation, hearsay, and lies, sprinkled with some facts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There are Facebook and Twitter feeds filled with articles that are filled with
half-truths that are followed by confident, hasty opinions. There are digitized disagreements
between "friends" and followers who've not heard the voice of the other in
years, if ever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrh8MA2Xkq2PWjZz_cSoSKEPFFxfKxRBh6yF2ZzqHKlMG2QDjaPKdq6TKa1UEk7t3YBee8aaJRf5iEEcFdn2Ncz2welCDiw2_dWiu4BJcE-lL1ls0k3Ve4iSSg5eLhRHZtN67FuxMMWE/s1600/flood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrh8MA2Xkq2PWjZz_cSoSKEPFFxfKxRBh6yF2ZzqHKlMG2QDjaPKdq6TKa1UEk7t3YBee8aaJRf5iEEcFdn2Ncz2welCDiw2_dWiu4BJcE-lL1ls0k3Ve4iSSg5eLhRHZtN67FuxMMWE/s1600/flood.jpg" height="174" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/94015342@N04/11729590915/">Adrian Kingsley-Hughes</a> via <a href="http://compfight.com/">Compfight</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You're overwhelmed by the flood; there may be no getting out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I remember watching (from the news) the floodwaters of 2005's Hurricane Katrina as they slowly receded. The dirty, displaced rubble left behind by the murky water was now ready to be rummaged through -- what is worth keeping? And what was really valuable to begin with?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The clean-up didn't happen alone. Communities - families, churches, restaurant staff, neighborhoods - worked through it together.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But by this time, many of the eyes watching the flood from cubicles and living rooms, once feeling as though they were caught up in it themselves, had moved on, changed channels, become weary or bored, because there seem to be so many floods these days. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To be sure, there was urgency during Katrina. Babies needed formula, hospitals needed medicine, and grandmothers needed rescuing from attics. There, too, is an urgency in our flood: parents want answers, authorities are overwhelmed, truths must come soon.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>But beyond the urgent days comes the slow, thoughtful, difficult work of sorting through the pieces, looking for the long view, seeing a way forward.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We continue to be surrounded by the floodwaters of injustice, war, famine and deceit. And for these floods that ravage our street and our city - no longer
just on our screens - may we have the courage to do the long
work of digging out what is valuable and recognizing what should be left
behind. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-64435522130620104082014-07-14T14:14:00.000-07:002014-07-14T14:14:51.853-07:00No Fear: You've Got to Dance<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We sat out on the grass yesterday evening, and as I watched the people shaking their hips and moving their feet to the rhythms of the funk band, I knew something was true:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>I've become afraid to dance.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qYwJX1bL44OvfhQ1ueAPup68oVvdxFKai6FSznC4IfqUkBTOdJTcv8a6YXjfYMug2bBD9RaK9tt94uWqRUPEdP1h4JgWSr0RJ7Yl5p48-8VwKGdskCb6liu9DldR8Y-Rnv23E82kPTA/s1600/levitt+shell.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qYwJX1bL44OvfhQ1ueAPup68oVvdxFKai6FSznC4IfqUkBTOdJTcv8a6YXjfYMug2bBD9RaK9tt94uWqRUPEdP1h4JgWSr0RJ7Yl5p48-8VwKGdskCb6liu9DldR8Y-Rnv23E82kPTA/s1600/levitt+shell.JPG" height="295" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I was 17 years old, on summer break between my junior and senior year of high school, we went to the mountains of North Carolina, where we went every year for our youth group trip. There were students there from churches all over the South, and it was my intention to meet every single one of them. And I almost did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was the joke every year that I'd come home with 50 email addresses, and just as many love clips (clothespins that you wrote words of encouragement/notes on and sneakily clipped to someone's shirttail or sleeve). I loved this about myself; there was no fear, just a seizing of the opportunity to know another person, laugh with them, sing with them, and if it happens to be a cute boy, flirt with him (ah, sweet summer camp).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But, now, I've become <i>afraid</i>, afraid of <i>what people will think of me.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Will they think I'm weird? Will they wonder why I want to talk to them? Will they think I'm childish? Will they stare at me?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What's interesting is that <b>none of these things matter.</b> Even if someone does think any of these things, does it really matter? Can we <i>really</i> manage what others assume about us before they know us? And if they do think we're weird, can we do anything about that? And... why do we care?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I could take time to answer these questions (as I've done a lot of analyzing - of myself and others - over this topic) but what I want to get to is this: <b>it doesn't matter what they think.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm not talking about character here - <i>character matters.</i> Here, I mean that it doesn't matter what people<b> </b>assume before ever getting to know us; it matters that we still walk up to their table, sit down beside them, and ask for their names. It matters that we get those email addresses and stay in touch. It matters that we walk down the sidewalk, wave our hands, and ask the first questions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We're all full of assumptions; you and I are both guilty of assumptions about others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's important to not let fear immobilize us from connecting with people, and it's important that our identity isn't wrapped up in other people's assumptions about us. It's important that we love others and connect deeply and make mistakes along the way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>And it's important that we dance.</b></span><br />
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Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-75341588604792453442014-07-11T14:33:00.002-07:002014-07-11T14:34:44.333-07:00Rain, Rain, Come and Stay<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBDW8ICa6pYRYCzOiNqG_L7qld_OqNaC5omLzkIb311rJRBbJVWt9ZmonTb_69QLOUy1CQ-tzjB1J_0maxdSpBBjbKFP_3Uzqm2-Z7737Z50otWBofzxmuHb1zS3o6rB6JcrRdERlaKgs/s1600/poem+and+rain.JPG" height="320" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="240" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sticky note poem writing, with the scent of rain sneaking in.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That smell of the rain</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">that came</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">to wash away</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">the heat of the day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Just when you were</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">hiding</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">all of your shame,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">hidden so far away</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">from the light of day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When things are gray</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">sometimes it is such relief,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">such relief</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>from yourself,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>from your pain.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Come, you pouring rain. </span></div>
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<br />Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-4630238903190928762014-07-01T20:23:00.000-07:002014-07-01T20:24:25.973-07:00Silent Work<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Small.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You started off so small.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">No roots, no plan, no place to call your own.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Scattered</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">by others, into places you may</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">not have chosen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dirty, unkempt, this place where you have landed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But you work,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">you grow those roots,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">dig down deep</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">into dirt that knows how to grab hold and keep you down. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This place that stains the soul</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">is good for something.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"I think I'll stay."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Light.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dark.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On and on this goes,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">while you,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ignored,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>keep at your silent work. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This will take time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Grow</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">grow</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">grow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Until someone notices</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">you've grown tall, strong, beautiful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You were small, but you were planted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Roots grown deep, much fruit to bear.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"I think I'll stay."</span></div>
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Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-33719741587636944332014-06-25T15:44:00.002-07:002014-06-25T15:58:19.555-07:00Embodiment: a revelation on the mountain<br />
Sitting on the lake, only a day away from our departure from that beautiful place, I prayed: for the boys who long to be loved in ways they're not being loved; for the girls whose father does not keep his promises; for the many we meet whose wounds are so deep, I fear they won't be uncovered and will remain bottomless and unknown.<br />
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"I don't understand. Why?"<br />
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Why is this my story, a girl in the mountains, on the mountain, singing songs and praying prayers in western North Carolina, the mountains I love so much? Why is this their story, unfaithful fathers, deep hurts, stuck in the city that suffocates us?<br />
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"Please don't leave them alone; please make a way; please protect them from the Evil One."<br />
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Then I'm reminded, I feel Jesus nudging:<b> "They are not alone; I've sent you."</b><br />
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What is this mystery that we embody Jesus, that we are one with him, that <i>we are the ones to go</i> and that <i>we are the ones whose hands heal, whose hearts love, whose arms hold, whose eyes cry, who pray without ceasing.</i> And so, Jesus is doing those very things... in us, with us, together. A mystery.<br />
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Jesus is with my neighbors; we are here.<br />
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Help me be faithful.Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-7675772539602220402014-05-20T08:21:00.001-07:002014-05-20T08:21:16.210-07:00Airport Observations: HumansTwo people in the corner of gate A27 here at the Memphis International Airport are talking, laughing. They both look to be in their 70s. Two people who 40 and 50 years ago never would have spoken, during a time when your skin color absolutely determined who you spoke to at the lunch counter, on the sidewalk, and in the airport. But today, they are friends, for 30 minutes.<br />
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In the sunlight beaming through the window, sits a woman, feeble, slow to turn her head when she hears the giggles of the toddler running around behind her. She's patiently awaiting her flight, basking in the sun with her thin white sweater on. Her family awaits in the noisier seating area.<br />
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A man, under the age of 50, surprisingly, reclines with feet propped up on his suitcase. Relaxed while he engages in one of my favorite airport activities - people-watching.<br />
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<b>Then there are the ones more like me:</b> born in the 80s and 90s, skinny jeans, Toms shoes, skirts with pockets. Our heads are bowed, our eyes are cast down, not in reverence but captivated by the screens in front of us.<br />
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We aren't the only ones; we've learned well from the great teachers of our parents' generation, most of whom are also glued to their devices. Checking emails, answering texts, listening to voicemails.<br />
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Connected to digital versions of people, missing the flesh and bone humans next to us.<br />
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<b>And we wonder why we're hungry for love.</b>Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-14231243537215499902014-04-25T18:56:00.000-07:002014-04-25T18:56:15.999-07:00Spring Updates: Music and Granny's China<b>That's right, I had a Granny.</b> If you grew in the South (with native Southern grandparents) you've had either a Granny, Memaw, Mamaw or MawMaw. And since I'm a good Southerner, I had a Granny. And she had some simple, but still beautiful china, gifted to her in celebration of her marriage in 1950.<br />
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This china, "Made in occupied Japan" as it says on the bottom of each dish, now resides in the Malcomb House here in Memphis and saw its inaugural use in this home on Easter Sunday. We found it fitting that on the day we celebrate, remember, rejoice that Jesus - Life that is Real Life - defeated death (the Resurrection), we unwrapped these dishes, washed them off, and set them on the table, giving them once again purpose and usefulness, new life, if you will.<br />
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Stuck in a dark shed no more. They've come to life on the dinner table where many, we hope and pray,<i> receive the breaths of new life each time they sit down to supper.</i><br />
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And with this season of "new" dishes, comes the resurrection of the out-of-doors world. Gardens shake off the winter chill and get ready to hold close those tiny seeds and help them grow, grow, grow. Children race outside, climbing onto our picnic table, fighting over who gets the blue chalk.<br />
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We love so dearly, ache for, smile upon our child-neighbors, who often spend time on our porch and in our yard.<br />
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<br />And for the first two weeks of April, we traveled through our great home state, Mississippi. Every set of travel is different, but with this common theme:<b> our lives are richly blessed with people who love us well. </b><br />
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From Petal to Tuscaloosa (a detour to Alabama), from Starkville to Waynesboro, and back down South to Hattiesburg. You folks are great; we love you so.<br />
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And finally, upon return, (and from being inspired by some of the homes we stayed in), Jeff built some shelves. Some very cool shelves for our ever-growing collection of coffee-brewing devices!<br />
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We're home for a month, before we travel much of the month of June, leading worship for students in Tennessee and North Carolina (our favorite place on earth... seriously.)<br />
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Here's to Spring! <b>It is fleeting; it is beautiful. </b>Enjoy it. Open your dinner table. Drink your coffee. Drink deeply of friendships. Meet new neighbors. Open your diner table <i>to them</i>. Love well.<br />
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Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-91437393995230024752014-03-21T18:07:00.001-07:002014-03-21T18:16:32.806-07:00Springtime: Ledge of Hope<b style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There are lots of things to be afraid of.</b><br />
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Snakes that slither so quickly toward you out of the dirt, slithering that makes your heart beat fast. </div>
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There's the sharp lightning dash, followed so quickly by the thunder peal that your eyes and brain didn't have time to tell your heart not to jump out of your chest.<br />
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Boys on ledges, eyeing you uneasily, while the one you thought sweet is almost swept up in their uneasiness. </div>
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Girls with tempers so red hot and fiery fast that you don't know which way your head is spinning once they're through with you.</div>
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A world that seems draped with the fog of danger and darkness; <i>broken daughters</i> looking for love their daddies never bothered to give and<i> lost sons</i> walking down sidewalks not bothering to look for meaning, because there is no meaning to be found.</div>
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And many, many days, I am afraid, that too much will be lost, too many hearts broken, too many families destroyed. That too many sons and daughters will believe the lies they've been told, <b>will not recognize the light for they've become accustomed to the dark.</b></div>
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<b>But when Spring comes,</b> <i>I remember there are so many things to be a part of.</i></div>
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There is dirt to dig, weeds to pull, with the help of 8 small hands, pulling their weight and then some.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spring sunset over our soon-to-be-prepared raised garden beds.</td></tr>
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There are porches to be sat on, while the storm rages on, because the rain sweeping across the freeway is just so beautiful this time.</div>
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There are sidewalks on which to walk, without fear, past those ledges, offering a soft but unwavering eye to the ledge-sitters, proclaiming, "I am not afraid," and maybe even, "I know this isn't you; I know you are kind."</div>
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And there is understanding and grace found, for the anger is not really about you, only piled up and up and up from years of abandonment and misdirection and wounds of wounds of wounds.</div>
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<b>It is Spring, and there is Hope yet to be found!</b></div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-66144602552683718762014-02-17T12:06:00.002-08:002014-02-17T12:09:12.997-08:00The Size of Your Heart<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">There's something that happens to me a lot, and I'm ashamed to admit it. <b> </b></span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The hatbox full of letters of so many friends that fill up my heart.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>But maybe some of you do this, too.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Do you know the feeling when you see Facebook pictures of your best friends hanging out with their <i>other</i> friends, the ones you always fear are a little cooler than you, enticing your besties with fun Friday night plans or a free vacation some warm, summer-year-round location?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Or you're at a party, sitting at the dinner table, when the <i>other</i> friend cracks some inside joke, of which you are clearly on the outside, or "remembers when" to a time of which for the life of you, you just cannot remember (until, oh yes, you can't remember because it happened on that warm vacation to which you weren't invited).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Those times stink, the times when you are reminded that your friends' lives don't revolve around you, and they do, in fact, have other friends.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then, one time, you went out to dinner with your besties - multiple sets of besties - and <b>you </b>cracked the inside joke about the New Year's party and <b>you</b> remembered the time at the lakehouse when you both thought you were brave enough to swim across the lake until a storm blew up, and you turned around for home.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And about the time you were turning around in the middle of the lake, you saw your friend's face fall just a bit, as she realized she wasn't there and this wasn't her story and so, for five or ten minutes, it feels like she's not cool enough or loved enough and maybe you do love your lakehouse friends more (no! wait! I love them all!)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">That's when you realize that if your heart's capacity is big enough for your lakehouse friends, drop-in friends, workout friends, laugh-at-nothing-and-everything friends, then maybe <i>their heart is that big, too. </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And if you genuinely love all those friends and value them for all the unique ways they make your life rich, <b>then they probably value you and love you that much, too.</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So, the next time they talk about that warm, sunny vacation, maybe you'll feel a twinge of jealousy, but it will quickly depart as you smile, sit back, listen and love that your friends all get to give and receive so much love - from you and many others.<i> </i></span></span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-14566008122461237002014-02-04T09:54:00.000-08:002014-02-08T12:25:29.604-08:00Wash the Dishes: Memory and Legacy<b>We washed. We dried. We put away.</b><br />
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This was the 2-3 times daily ritual of the dishes, led by a grandchild, always participated in by Nana.<br />
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Oh, she had a dishwasher, but rarely did she use it except for the big holiday meals and whenever else she got a hankering for its sanitizing power. Nana seemed to prefer the handwashing.<br />
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Or maybe she just preferred the time with her grandchildren, all working together, suds and dishtowels, the stool that made me tall enough to join in, plunging my hands into the warm water filling that yellow, porcelain sink.<br />
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This is one of my sharpest, most distinct memories with Nana. We worked together, sometimes after breakfast, lunch and dinner, before plenty of game-playing, bowling or a trip to the Bingo hall, where we read our own books while they played (or, best of all, when she snuck us one of her Bingo cards where, if we won, she yelled "Bingo!" for us since, after all, we were under 18). We went to the movies, to the mall, to the park. We spent countless nights over at her house, joining Pop's ritual watching of Wheel of Fortune after an early dinner.<br />
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Before the meal that dirtied the dishes, there were leaves. Yes, <i>the dreaded leaves.</i> And pine straw.<br />
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We gathered up the needed supplies - gloves, rakes, trash bags, the wheelbarrow from the shed - and knew that you had to stoop low enough to get all the leaves from under the bushes or Pop would surely notice and make you go back and get them later. We knew not to stop into Ms. Jones' yard lest she see you on her property and give you the evil eye.<br />
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<b>We worked together a lot.</b><br />
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And you know, these times were good to us. Could it be that now, because of those dishes and leaves, I understand the joy and camaraderie of working alongside those you love ? When Susan and I spend hours weeding in the garden, don't we have some of the best and often unexpected conversations there?<br />
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<b>My Nana gave this to me; </b>this is her legacy. She taught us work. She taught us togetherness. She showed us family.Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-17060125208541108892014-01-07T09:30:00.005-08:002014-01-07T09:30:55.967-08:00A Chance to Change<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In less than a month, our new housemate will move in. Here are 5 things I hope </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"><b>not</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> to do:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;"><ol>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Resent him for not doing his dishes.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Tell him one thing when I mean another. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Instead, I’ll have a real conversation about it, not a passive-aggressive one in passing.</i></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Ask him to do things that I am not willing to do myself. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">How many times have I caught myself doing the very thing that bugs me about another person?</i></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Forget it’s his house, too. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">He pays rent. He lives here. Give up some control here.</i></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Love myself more than him. </span></li>
</ol>
</span><div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As hard as it is to live with others - sharing space, sharing decisions, sharing needs -<b> it can often be harder to live with yourself. </b></span></span><br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the 5 years we’ve lived with a variety of people, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve not necessarily <i>changed</i> a lot about myself, but I have seen it. I have spoken it aloud. But now it my opportunity to put into practice some of the change I hope to see in myself.</span></span><br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What have you learned about yourself from living with others (roommates, spouses, parents, etc.)? Have you been brave enough, vulnerable enough, to make changes?</span></span></div>
</div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-2392267243830032892014-01-03T08:27:00.000-08:002014-01-03T08:36:15.200-08:00You and Me, On the Curb<div style="font-size: 12px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhETKAMsdXifjZT4xgMiWRk6gvjTYsvtJrsYB8qyPPsU8pfPfeReM8UEPaj5uLVUcNbrTr3j5Z2IAJoYkeuSsFeXGzFJ3yhg_pycKrnzEzeCHTi-3nlS9FGo_PRcVgMrPaKLx9YrJJpJqs/s1600/door%252C+blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhETKAMsdXifjZT4xgMiWRk6gvjTYsvtJrsYB8qyPPsU8pfPfeReM8UEPaj5uLVUcNbrTr3j5Z2IAJoYkeuSsFeXGzFJ3yhg_pycKrnzEzeCHTi-3nlS9FGo_PRcVgMrPaKLx9YrJJpJqs/s320/door%252C+blog.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Mattresses, clothes, a baby crib. Bookshelf, rocking chair, lamp, microwave. All things that immediately identify regular, everyday living, things that most of us have in our homes and closets, on our shelves, in our kitchens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We shop for them at thrift stores and on Craigslist; receive them at wedding showers and baby showers; get them as hand-me-downs from grandparents and aunts. Their usefulness goes unnoticed most days, as we rise up and sit back down in the same old chair, re-heat our leftovers every day at lunch, drift off to sleep night after night, some more restless than others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But when stacked on the curb, near the intersection of Holmes and Walnut Grove, any passerby knows it means one thing only: <b>eviction.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">_____________________</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My coffee was only $2.68. Unlimited refills. That’s worth it to me, when I’ve set up shop here at this local cafe, knowing I should be buying food (and often, I do). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve got a five-dollar bill left, one I’m half-prepared to give to the woman on the corner a half-mile back, the one holding the sign while smiling at me as I turned at the light, making my way here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>It’s not that I’m always compassionate; </b>I love excuses. </span><span style="text-align: center;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“She’s probably lying to me.” (Yes, there’s a good chance of that.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“She probably keeps making bad decisions.” (Also a good chance of that. A lot of people who make bad decisions, including myself, still have a roof over their head. So, what?)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“I’ve seen her before; why hasn’t anything changed?” (Because most people only give her five-dollar bills and then drive away never to think twice about her.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What I know is that she needs more than a five-dollar bill, and <i>that</i> is what’s hard to address. What she needs is to be looked in the eyes and asked, “What is your name?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That is scarier, harder, asks more of me, like getting out of my car on [what a south Mississippi-born gal considers to be] a bitterly cold day. It means she might ask for more. It means she might have the opportunity to lie to me. Or to tell me the truth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>And the truth usually asks much more of me than a lie.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">_____________________</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">
As I think about the invisible family who got evicted less than a mile from my house and the woman on the corner less than a mile from my mind, I’m struck by the power of community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Are these families, made of mothers and sons, grandmothers and goddaughters, connected to a community? What kind of community? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In my Christian community, one where we seek to know, support and love each other more richly than a success and power-driven culture might have us do, we talk about community <i>a lot</i>. I think we’ve concluded that it’s not community if we just hang out, if we aren’t going deeper, if we aren’t seeking God together.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And I agree: that is a good, rich definition of community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But that’s <i>our </i>definition of community, that when we've finally reached "real community" it's good, and hard, and rich.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Almost everyone is a part of a community: </b>the homeless community, a family community, a religious community. It can be healthy, or it can be toxic. It can be life-giving, or it can be demanding and controlling. Almost always there is <i>some</i> community at work in someone’s decisions, health and well-being, or lack thereof. Community is, indeed, powerful, whether for good or bad.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">And this is why I’m thinking about community. Is there a good, healthy community at work in the lives of those I’m writing about today, the woman on the corner, the family out of a home? Maybe. Their community might be doing the best they can to love them and serve them in hard places, giving temporary shelter when the locks were changed, or on the coldest of nights.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But my gut says that there is a truly <b><i>good</i></b> community yet to be found, a community of hospitality, of welcome and love that says <i>come as you are</i>. A community that has been welcomed first by the One who dwelt in flesh, living among wanderers who lived on every extreme of the spectrums: from fishermen to rabbis, from powerful men to weak and property-less women, from legalistic leaders to faith-filled tax collectors who invited Him in for dinner. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjtaCSiDg57B6p-YfC5IZiNnqBdH6hlpnTxP0tJuwizRsAzrz1CnVqur9rAnvViUM7tTjBXmj34g66TFJ2OF-FJQwjsVdRFKl55R47fkrgCAqRQuvM9tWn_FVSkPzl1iyzh0QHWCxLBrk/s1600/DSCN3352.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjtaCSiDg57B6p-YfC5IZiNnqBdH6hlpnTxP0tJuwizRsAzrz1CnVqur9rAnvViUM7tTjBXmj34g66TFJ2OF-FJQwjsVdRFKl55R47fkrgCAqRQuvM9tWn_FVSkPzl1iyzh0QHWCxLBrk/s320/DSCN3352.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is what I’ve yet to get, to really internalize, that I was <b>invited and loved as I was, as I am</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was given a home, an identity, a purpose, even with all my crap on the curb and my little lies just to get a handout or two to make myself feel better for about 24 hours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">And now, I am to <b>go and do likewise. </b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-54244060583940430042014-01-02T08:45:00.005-08:002014-01-02T08:45:48.400-08:00Walking Lonely Roads<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYi7Ztf7VPjxk8NmSf9jzGQuY-vUlR4Hzj08l8qht7SbZ5l2Vvwi5OpYuiwGYfS_q2nXnKnlcjOuxvdDf2zIEAX_p5sSxuDiQJYrJSVLy2Dnbl8gMh-0ohfVwMs02T2SG7K2nAXUfjk7Y/s1600/The+Reading+Nook.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYi7Ztf7VPjxk8NmSf9jzGQuY-vUlR4Hzj08l8qht7SbZ5l2Vvwi5OpYuiwGYfS_q2nXnKnlcjOuxvdDf2zIEAX_p5sSxuDiQJYrJSVLy2Dnbl8gMh-0ohfVwMs02T2SG7K2nAXUfjk7Y/s320/The+Reading+Nook.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<b>Some days it is a lonely road on which the artists walks. </b>The way we must document everything, in lines and fire, dust and color, words and song. Why must the smallest of things be noted, some so taxing to read, listen to, watch. Are our mediums - canvas, clay, paper - just places to groan, complain about what's wrong around us, draw attention to ourselves to fill some hole left unfilled in our childhoods?<br />
<br />
Even our closest friends can sometimes feel the pressure from being given too much emotion, baggage, thoughts brought up from the depths. C'mon, just leave it buried; that's what we do.<br />
<br />
As I write, I imagine how my husband might respond to the exposed things, possibly with, "What?" or "What do you mean?" or "Hmmmmm, good writing." Even to those as close to us as a spouse or a sibling, there's no way to wholly transfer experience, perception, feeling. As a songwriter, I hope to at least stir up some desire for the listener to think on their own experience, as a result of placing themselves in mine for 4 minutes.<br />
<br />
It's a scary thing to pick up that guitar and expose the flaws, loves, guilts, hatreds I've found in myself. Or what more of the same you will find in me, once you hear.<br />
<br />
<b>But mine isn't the only road that's lonely.</b><br />
<br />
Yours is, too.<br />
<br />
You've documented everything that's ever happened to you, been done to you, documented it in your own head. You, too, note every small thing, every failure, every victory. You beat yourself up, pick yourself up, and, if you're brave enough, eek out little snippets of these things to the ones closest to you, hoping to feel some relief, should they reach out and grab hold of what you've given them.<br />
<br />
But for some, you'll never tell, never explain, never get around to the deepest of deeps.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>For me, and maybe for you, I just can't help but write it down.</b><br />
<br />
I'll help you walk that often lonely road. Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-10600492164172227982013-12-25T12:24:00.001-08:002013-12-25T12:24:18.565-08:00Santa's Broken Leg and Grace<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8XNH50TTXzt93DHVRt9P9LyUI5Y1cBdU7WM8I43f6HGABkfTXXGG41-YDYhqW79IP6Pm7pqgagJfXUBUO-BrO9vwvk3f0_3UqJAsozrVRVlhfi7mqapOfDESyKFYfHxPtQMKQ-lP1UtI/s1600/A,+E+and+J.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8XNH50TTXzt93DHVRt9P9LyUI5Y1cBdU7WM8I43f6HGABkfTXXGG41-YDYhqW79IP6Pm7pqgagJfXUBUO-BrO9vwvk3f0_3UqJAsozrVRVlhfi7mqapOfDESyKFYfHxPtQMKQ-lP1UtI/s320/A,+E+and+J.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With our adventurous, kind-hearted nephew</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I heard the fall of something tiny but breakable on the other side of the living room, looking up to find my nephew with that "oops" look on his face. He scrambled under the end table to retrieve Santa, in two pieces, with one less limb attached. With worried eyebrows, he ran to the kitchen to find Papa T, afraid of how he'd be met. Raised voice? Spanking? Repeated instruction about not to roughhouse in places he shouldn't?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Instead, he found grace.</b> "It's OK, we can glue it." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Though he ran to the room to cry and release the fear he'd felt, the grace was still there, immoveable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But so many will not find that. So many will not receive grace, and in turn, will not learn how to offer it to others, instead only learning how to extend punishment, shame and fear: an illusion of control to help them overcome the many years they felt so out of control (and controlled by others).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>you found grace and ease in the eyes of your papa</i></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>but others aren't so lucky to find that kind of love.</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>he is afraid of everything you and I might dismiss.</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>every simple break, every small slip,</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>a reason to scream, a reason to fight</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>control is the name of the game</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>do you find joy in handing out shame?</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>and is it because you believe</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>that nothing's worth anything, not even yourself.</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>to you, I think this must mean</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>the little one there is no better than you,</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>no better than you must have been told</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; text-align: center;">
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>but isn't this way getting old?</i></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Will I know how to extend to grace to so many I meet, who know the pain of years of shame and fear? Will I let this help me understand what it might have felt like to live in fear of the adults who should have shepherded yet led me down paths of darkness instead?</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Lord, have mercy.</b></span></div>
</div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-79504217243984358122013-12-22T16:30:00.001-08:002013-12-22T16:30:31.473-08:00Songwriting and The People I LoveThe room was filled with ones from, literally, every season of my life. From the elementary school playground, to the high school classroom. From the 4th floor of Jones Hall to the staff of 40+, crammed together in a 2-story building and humid Memphis summer. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Between some, the letters still pass between mailboxes, from south Mississippi to west Tennessee. With others the conversations have stilled, but the memories still carry us. With some, I've wondered, "Do they know I still love them so?" and I know with their presence, they love me, too.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And many of those same ones in that room, listening, watching, make up pieces of the melodies and lyrics they heard. Do they know? It's hard to tell. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But one thing is true and always will be: if I love you at all, pieces of you are mixed up with pieces of me. You are these songs and these stories.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
____________________</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
When I'm sitting across the room from an interesting conversation or tucked away in the corner, reading a book that's revealing too much of myself to me... a song is starting.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
When I'm reading your letter, from many years ago or from yesterday, of heartache and pain and love twisted and turned... a song is starting.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
When you've told me I've hurt you, and I raise the shield, afraid of my own self... a song is starting.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My brain never stops writing. Lines and lines of poetry swim around in my head and, if I'm quick enough, spill out onto the page. You may never hear them, but they are there. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>And if you do hear them, give me grace.</b> I must write. I must sing. Because I love you.</div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-75794964228845931472013-11-29T17:07:00.002-08:002013-11-29T17:10:26.775-08:00Stories & TimeWhen I discovered that the author of <i><a href="http://www.neabigread.org/books/lessonbeforedying/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">A Lesson Before Dying</span></a></i> was an African-American author from Louisiana who grew up on a plantation, I instantly began scanning the Google results for biographies and interviews, sources to give more details, the grit on his life.<br />
<br />
What was is like for Ernest J. Gaines to grow up on a plantation in a small Southern town with deep racial divides? Was he mistreated? Does he talk about the landowners? Is he still connected to the family there? I assumed there were juicy details (doesn't every life have some juicy details?), and I wanted to know them all right then and there.<br />
<br />
But I couldn't find much.<br />
<br />
I learned of his parents' absence in his childhood, his relocation to California as a teenager and the name of his hometown. I know that a new world seemed to open up to him when, for the first time in his life, he had access to books through the public libraries there in California.<br />
<br />
He went on to teach, write books and return to Louisiana, settling down there on part of the very land where the plantation of his childhood stood, building a home of his own.<br />
<br />
The basics, the highlight reel. But no juicy details.<br />
<br />
He tells us in an interview that the aunt who raised him, teachers who taught him and the versions of himself that could have been, show up in some form in his stories.<br />
<br />
To get more of Ernest J. Gaines, <b>I have to do the time.</b><br />
<br />
I've got to read those books.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
______________________</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>I've been known skip the small talk.</b> What starts as a "hello" at the drink table of the New Year's Eve party may turn into a 2-hour conversation about your last heartbreak which may turn into a song by midnight.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
While I generally like this about myself, I've learned in recent years that, in certain circumstances, there are questions best left unasked, stories left unknown, until time has passed, life has been lived and permission has been granted into the parts of a life that are opened by the stories we tell each other.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I cringe at some of the invasive, personal questions I've asked before enough trust was established. The advice I gave to the person sitting on the couch across from me because I was, perhaps, more anxious to fix than to love.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Now, I know I have to do the time:</b> cook the meals that make the space that give the freedom for the stories to spill out over the kitchen, ready to be heard at just the right time, usually when I least expect it. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As I write this, there is impatience being stilled in me, the desire to get quick to the finish is subsiding. Because there is no quick to the finish.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><i>There is only the long, slow reading of the stories and living of lives, </i></b>weaving together histories, making new stories along the way.</div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-41062842515595093692013-10-31T09:00:00.000-07:002013-10-31T20:35:24.252-07:00Thursday Poem: Joined<br />
Might God give the weak to the strong, for one to lift the other up, for one to keep the other humble?<br />
<br />
Might God give the sure to the shaky, to keep each other rooted, lest pride or wandering take them each too far?<br />
<br />
Might God give the quiet to the loud, giving one more strength to find her voice and the other wisdom to learn to listen?<br />
<br />
Might God give the joyful ones to the sorrowful, that there may be laughter where skies have been gray and grief where sadness was never recognized?<br />
<br />
Might God give us to each other <b>to be what we cannot be on our own?</b>Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-60825420807134639462013-10-29T11:00:00.003-07:002013-10-29T11:02:42.804-07:00Photo UpdateSome photos, in chronological order, of random things:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0cQHAYz1Xk-OCy9KiEAcpOoKvrYTS7BN7DE-dQIuGQXlJnKG-UbndBKCHb3_A3in-qBaB5m3dtRu9I-uN4J0nIIPC4EsNdYdBakh8RgYqthRt9K4tA9iCD1IUtZ2ChYYQHWsCvPu00A/s1600/Abbye+Jeff+Sonny's.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0cQHAYz1Xk-OCy9KiEAcpOoKvrYTS7BN7DE-dQIuGQXlJnKG-UbndBKCHb3_A3in-qBaB5m3dtRu9I-uN4J0nIIPC4EsNdYdBakh8RgYqthRt9K4tA9iCD1IUtZ2ChYYQHWsCvPu00A/s400/Abbye+Jeff+Sonny's.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">April 2013. In Ackerman and Louisville, MS, where we played a show <br />
for Matthew's <i><a href="http://www.matthewclark.net/" target="_blank">Bright Came the Word from His Mouth</a></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjsYU2THGqkS-wGtO43i9BiRAEbSxkjmUYBiukFC6d30Vnd8YQgW3Bh2Tr4noolZLMFC5xxn5yIq0OiDxmhaOr0V1xV8198RbpOGeHUoDchER7t7aZuZc9e3EVmAwEV6p9gKlcka-wVdU/s1600/Matthew+Sam+Closer+Sonny's.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjsYU2THGqkS-wGtO43i9BiRAEbSxkjmUYBiukFC6d30Vnd8YQgW3Bh2Tr4noolZLMFC5xxn5yIq0OiDxmhaOr0V1xV8198RbpOGeHUoDchER7t7aZuZc9e3EVmAwEV6p9gKlcka-wVdU/s400/Matthew+Sam+Closer+Sonny's.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brothers, Matthew and Sam. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPP5DJIlD-tElS98g2or6D7oNGoMGhgQLcOcTdmCJE4rwP9_Uc7apYMh-HT1aNfCqAwE0v1Uoyw80nY82ZuaIy829ZlUYOXQ1nNLXBDADSvcVJSnNyNRU2-v-CBjT_jJD-Ly-awaxByFo/s1600/Ghostly+Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPP5DJIlD-tElS98g2or6D7oNGoMGhgQLcOcTdmCJE4rwP9_Uc7apYMh-HT1aNfCqAwE0v1Uoyw80nY82ZuaIy829ZlUYOXQ1nNLXBDADSvcVJSnNyNRU2-v-CBjT_jJD-Ly-awaxByFo/s400/Ghostly+Tree.jpg" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">May 2013, a ghostly image taken from the porch of Jeff's parents' home in southwestern NC.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6s7N2VTsZaWSI6Ugiq485mh30EYliPbCaVJG2S1uKJ1YlR-oevUlNKp-qcJgzxd7tYNNL80FAWSUxN2si7DJhGYXX46LrblV-NJz942dMJvm6NnyBGsOzgM5fw9C5oBV-0T31_3gEfo0/s1600/Matthew+Cutting+Cheese.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6s7N2VTsZaWSI6Ugiq485mh30EYliPbCaVJG2S1uKJ1YlR-oevUlNKp-qcJgzxd7tYNNL80FAWSUxN2si7DJhGYXX46LrblV-NJz942dMJvm6NnyBGsOzgM5fw9C5oBV-0T31_3gEfo0/s400/Matthew+Cutting+Cheese.jpg" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">July 2013. During a retreat weekend, we let Matthew cut the cheese, because he's so darn good at it.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">September 2013. Our first T-shirt! We promoted this via social media and gave 2 away!<br />
Designed by <a href="http://www.susankizzee.com/" target="_blank">Susan Kizzee</a>, printed by <a href="http://www.ambrose.is/" target="_blank">Ambrose</a>.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">October 2013. The Great Midwestern Tour took us to Minneapolis.<br />
The sun peeks over a bridge in Minnehaha Falls State Park.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brian insisted on jumping and walking on things that looked very dangerous to me.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brian and Jeff love each other. Sweet.</td></tr>
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Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-53680405119240426232013-10-15T09:29:00.001-07:002013-10-15T09:29:07.742-07:00Tour Update: Gifts from the Great MidwestWrapped in what looks like a Native American inspired blanket, I'm sitting in an old mill-converted-to-condo in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, listening to the wind whip furiously around the corner of the building and the rain splashing against the windows.<br />
<br />
We've only 3 shows left on the Great Midwestern Tour, which has, indeed, been very great.<br />
<br />
Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin: cities states I've never been to and all of them, I found beautiful.<br />
<br />
More than the hills and the fields and the golden leaves on the trees, we spent time with some really beautiful people. For us, touring and music-sharing without people and story-sharing would empty and hollow.<br />
<br />
Our hosts and listeners, old friends and new, come from our past (fellow Mississippi-natives!) and our present. Some like to be quiet and slow and talk thru the hours, others tell louder and funnier stories that give us good, hearty laughs. All have been beautiful.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3RdFP0s2-NnsqSAkoqZwHhTHkK3COqHhB8293v4a6DJmC4rkGZn56OZQNG7sMSA1pygeT4mWRzHmZArPBD83ieNBJU7UXRpdpPpEov8b9PNUkkerksmk3Bo0oS5VBprviAN2Pp5JK9Jk/s1600/Becca.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3RdFP0s2-NnsqSAkoqZwHhTHkK3COqHhB8293v4a6DJmC4rkGZn56OZQNG7sMSA1pygeT4mWRzHmZArPBD83ieNBJU7UXRpdpPpEov8b9PNUkkerksmk3Bo0oS5VBprviAN2Pp5JK9Jk/s320/Becca.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rebecca Johnson, our host in Oshkosh, WI, also a fellow native Mississippian.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisP-WBTxmIQkHRSzplXx6v9RIJxUPQ2wBs4ZO2EvagT74GpZCJGrVZdS29SBzh4Z2-ehm8LkaFApq3Bv5a44jNWpRXWRykIOjfbZc5JaCVTgJqE4VbVsf13Urw3_kqejeTAc2mLCEQvGY/s1600/New+City.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisP-WBTxmIQkHRSzplXx6v9RIJxUPQ2wBs4ZO2EvagT74GpZCJGrVZdS29SBzh4Z2-ehm8LkaFApq3Bv5a44jNWpRXWRykIOjfbZc5JaCVTgJqE4VbVsf13Urw3_kqejeTAc2mLCEQvGY/s320/New+City.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The super-cool set-up for our Oshkosh show, at New City Church.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0N-9aGk_yZLV4nVDXgxD7oTUgoJZ0YgBsAk-iXkozCaCMBwtjvDXnhr9_AtggToNuFjgW-QHr-UFoHYs7LM4H62jdchbkH9nlwMTj2Knxhhj1MoD0XUyNPJR8k-VzRfvMCmpj8FHJQTc/s1600/Fayetteville.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0N-9aGk_yZLV4nVDXgxD7oTUgoJZ0YgBsAk-iXkozCaCMBwtjvDXnhr9_AtggToNuFjgW-QHr-UFoHYs7LM4H62jdchbkH9nlwMTj2Knxhhj1MoD0XUyNPJR8k-VzRfvMCmpj8FHJQTc/s320/Fayetteville.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Phom and Kaylee Sisoukrath, Little Rock, AR hosts and friends we met through working at <a href="http://www.sosmemphis.org/" target="_blank">SOS</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCfvHzWxmEoVIyq1ojgrmI5R-XOIX4_-FvxZ4kSHQcWkvWU6Fsc00R41nYe5mSuaSZyOPk6gDkUkYeN7a_kbh26FgkSMSccOHMqsG1jkS2yUnXx4J4ks6u3Hw0-uaUTYbjTQK47RdvrdQ/s1600/Henderson+House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCfvHzWxmEoVIyq1ojgrmI5R-XOIX4_-FvxZ4kSHQcWkvWU6Fsc00R41nYe5mSuaSZyOPk6gDkUkYeN7a_kbh26FgkSMSccOHMqsG1jkS2yUnXx4J4ks6u3Hw0-uaUTYbjTQK47RdvrdQ/s320/Henderson+House.jpg" width="304" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Minneapolis, MN-area house show</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivm3bc0okL0A_YRIGBidPjVdSigMvoAHZuSNiUNfWE-ok3662ZS8cMGQg0fQJrTwDEar9NcdoFOV3Xx9GPwOQbG764zMvQTfTC_N8bd1Q0oEK7I39nr_6WvjkNYDe8LG362X-4HWoPHNg/s1600/Lantrips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivm3bc0okL0A_YRIGBidPjVdSigMvoAHZuSNiUNfWE-ok3662ZS8cMGQg0fQJrTwDEar9NcdoFOV3Xx9GPwOQbG764zMvQTfTC_N8bd1Q0oEK7I39nr_6WvjkNYDe8LG362X-4HWoPHNg/s320/Lantrips.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Matt & Su, Omaha, NE hosts. We loved all the Mississippi-art in their home!<br />Su, also sporting the Abbye West Pates shirt.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdEWjdbms2ICmy7LEB8uYN715P7Rx6m5bBIljgdZZzQAAOttkgSMw5EdviguLacGflcxAiovj1GIBiRNjSmABS9BMxWbPV02ZvaF7GEeBVDOuu_xzmqqeLFSlFM1WEvZ7i-c-ZSr8xoSQ/s1600/Omaha+House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdEWjdbms2ICmy7LEB8uYN715P7Rx6m5bBIljgdZZzQAAOttkgSMw5EdviguLacGflcxAiovj1GIBiRNjSmABS9BMxWbPV02ZvaF7GEeBVDOuu_xzmqqeLFSlFM1WEvZ7i-c-ZSr8xoSQ/s320/Omaha+House.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Omaha, NE house show. This was a really, <i>really</i> good night.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEgN_zr47NcFCUrn9Ng5j30EZO8QjqT50cs8JjMu-q-XaTV9MjfveGKvepgH9ofwZTXnZdg3UdmrC7Gw63J1_zEmJVkIO1oc0LUjlNOzEssY26UzKH6l19jUNiyUaquby5xY6J3lvsrWA/s1600/Omaha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEgN_zr47NcFCUrn9Ng5j30EZO8QjqT50cs8JjMu-q-XaTV9MjfveGKvepgH9ofwZTXnZdg3UdmrC7Gw63J1_zEmJVkIO1oc0LUjlNOzEssY26UzKH6l19jUNiyUaquby5xY6J3lvsrWA/s320/Omaha.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The whole Omaha crew!</td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Before we left, and even often on the tour, we've been asked in various ways how we make this work, how we make any money. It's a legitimate question; there's no fault in wondering how we "make it work". But while I believed it before, I believe it more now: this isn't about money. If it were, then we'd be doing something else.<br />
<br />
<b>It's about people and story-sharing. </b>It's also hard work: writing, practicing, traveling, set-up, tear-down, meeting people, selling merch, giving attention to listeners after the show. This is our work, and it is good.<br />
<br />
The final word: I'm not ready for touring to end!Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-1238811881415882192013-10-03T07:33:00.001-07:002013-10-03T07:33:11.461-07:00A Quick "Here's What We're Doing"Sadly, the writing that I love so much, has taken a backseat to booking, practicing, juggling multiple types of work, etc. and I have neglected to write here. It isn't forever, but it is for now.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Filling our house are guitars, cables, suitcases, air mattresses, drums, and computers. We're practicing, singing, cooking, Instagram-ing, practicing some more.<br /><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Tomorrow we set out on the <i>Great Midwestern Tour</i> </b>beginning in Little Rock, AR, followed by a stop on Sunday at Central UMC in Fayetteville, AR, leading morning worship services there. On the way, we're going to Omaha, NE; Minneapolis, MN; Oshkosh, WI; Chicago; Holland, MI and Elkhart, IN. We'll come back and play a few Mississippi shows with Matthew Clark, who is traveling on the tour with us, mixing in a couple of his shows.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Our friend and brother, Brian Mulder, drove down from Michigan to spend the whole month touring with us. It's crazy that the 4 of us are basically going to spend an entire month together, but it's happening. "How are you traveling?" you ask: We bought a trailer. That's right, we're loading up the trailer, hitching it onto the back of our 11-year old SUV, and praying for those traveling mercies that we hope get us from point A to point B or at least help us have patience with each other if the tire goes flat.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you're not already, keep up with us at www.abbyewestpates.com, or on social media: FB, www.facebook.com/abbyewestpatesmusic or Twitter, @AWPmusic. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here we go!</div>
Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-1540718196527626322013-09-12T10:54:00.003-07:002013-09-12T10:54:52.944-07:00Thursday Poem: In HarmonyTo the untrained, unschooled ear<br />
the different notes against each other<br />
mean nothing profound.<br />
<br />
Show them written on a staff<br />
so correctly<br />
is like the most foreign tongue.<br />
<br />
But put those notes in your throat<br />
out through your lips<br />
and even the untrained ear<br />
<b>recognizes the beautiful mystery</b><br />
that is the sound of harmony.Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-25795783702868936242013-09-05T13:38:00.003-07:002013-09-05T13:43:24.238-07:00Mini-Tour: KentuckySun and wind have an agreement today: <b>be perfect.</b><br />
<br />
Just enough breeze to rustle the leaves and make you feel good after you top the hill on your afternoon run. Just enough warmth to make you feel thankful for now and hopeful for later.<br />
<br />
The goldenrods line the creekside, in full September bloom. At the top of the hill, red and green tomatoes share the vine, mint spills over the edges, and okra grows tall. Steaming past is the Norfolk Southern, right at our back door, amazing us with its power and speed.<br />
<br />
Smells of stovestops from around the world drift over to where I am, reminding me of many places where I've been, in the living rooms of friends both near and far. Past the stovetops, out the door, down the steps run the children - so many children! - from Singapore, Sudan, China, Tennessee, Kenya.<br />
<br />
Running, jumping, claiming these streets, these children proclaim with their play, "The Kingdom is here!"Grown-ups, as so we are, reminded that though it is "not yet" it is, too, "now".<br />
<br />
<b>"A glimpse" they call it. </b>A wonder, it is. Beauty almost too good for me to behold from this porch in Wilmore, Kentucky, home to a school giving such life and community and hope to its students, its families. They show us it is possible, we can live, play, eat together, in unity, in love. No matter the color of our skin or the color of our past. Jesus died so that we could be One as he and the Father are One.<br />
<br />
We've jumped into the middle of this, with our instruments and our stories, seemingly unworthy recipients of such beauty.<br />
<br />
<b>And this is just Day 1.</b>Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-90493311405810800022013-08-15T08:22:00.003-07:002013-08-15T08:22:43.432-07:00Thursday Poem: A Musician's LifeTuesday<br />
felt the doubt creep in<br />
<br />
Walked away<br />
from everything safe<br />
<br />
Benefits of peace of mind<br />
doctor visits<br />
tooth pain<br />
of not hearing reprimands for not having<br />
all of the above<br />
<br />
Tuesday<br />
needed the wind<br />
and the clouds<br />
to give rest from the worry.<br />
<br />
Today is different.<br />
<br />
Patty sings<br />
of work-weary sons<br />
fathers, walked on to the other side<br />
and that kind of lonely.<br />
<br />
And I know<br />
<i>I know</i><br />
that all of this matters<br />
more than many will understand<br />
<br />
Until the dark hour<br />
when they lay on their bed<br />
climbing stairs in their mind<br />
stairs to nowhere<br />
stuck in their mistakes<br />
and reminded of grace<br />
<br />
From one song<br />
one voice<br />
that refused listen to the voices<br />
that said, "This is not safe."<br />
<br />
After all<br />
we do this because<br />
this is not safe.<br />
<br />Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-68049138841243736962013-08-08T07:41:00.000-07:002013-08-08T07:41:05.357-07:00Thursday Poem: What Keeps MeEscape the lights,<br />
camera,<br />
action.<br />
<br />
Retreat to the oneness,<br />
piano,<br />
empty,<br />
yet full.<br />
<br />
Sunlight<br />
through pieced-together glass,<br />
colors bright.<br />
Warmth.<br />
<br />
We need not add much;<br />
it is simple here.<br />
Small in number, we are.<br />
Names we know.<br />
Faces we recognize,<br />
on that backdrop<br />
of colored glass.<br />
<br />
Awkward,<br />
imperfect,<br />
faithful.<br />
In song,<br />
in repetition,<br />
in the words of saints and sinners.<br />
<br />
A table<br />
chalice... the blood;<br />
bread... the body;<br />
need - this is our need.<br />
<br />
Not sometimes<br />
but all the time.<br />
<br />
I did not choose you;<br />
yet, you choose me.<br />
Savior.<br />
Bride.<br />
<br />
Both of you, mystery to me.<br />
<br />
Running<br />
often seems desirable.<br />
To something less complicated,<br />
something more clean.<br />
<br />
But I know<br />
less complicated<br />
I will not find<br />
Less complicated<br />
is still need for the<br />
Saving One.<br />
<br />
So, I stay.Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820524790563550002.post-43512592508874651932013-08-04T13:26:00.000-07:002013-08-04T14:15:23.746-07:00Grandfather<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Little children came and grew</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Moved away and never knew</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Who I was or who I am</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>No they never knew this lonely man<br />("Faithful Son" by Patty Griffin)</i></div>
<br />
**I didn't want to walk through that door, didn't want to cross the threshold into your world or harsh opinions and unwelcome criticism.<br />
<br />
Home from college for the weekend, it was the last thing I wanted to do, spend time with you. We'd sit in your living room, the television our background noise, while you asked me obligatory questions and I gave you as truthful and polished answers as I could.<br />
<br />
There was a time before that, high school, where we had that parade. Remember that one? You were mad at me. I chose a friend over you. I think it was silly. Except now, I think it was silly on both of our parts.<br />
<br />
<b>We didn't get this way overnight. </b>We both know it was 18 years in the making.<br />
<br />
Do you remember the time you grabbed me by the shoulders and marched me to the back to raise your voice at me? Did I even know what I'd done wrong. You were quick to punish; reluctant to listen. I remember. I listened to every word you did and did not say. We all did.<br />
<br />
And that is why, on those weekends home, I did not want to see you.<br />
<br />
But life had not been kind. Your years were longer and harder than mine will ever be.<br />
<br />
I did not know that then. <b>I know that now.</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
_________________________</div>
<br />
<br />
Your garden was the fruit of your labors. The corn grew tall. The potatoes grew deep and large. The peas, we shelled on the back porch, with the sun shining through.<br />
<br />
The floors we walked, the walls that kept us, the shrimp in the fryer, these were the fruit of your years of hard work, your years of proving to yourself and to everyone else just how hard work can be and how good the reward.<br />
<br />
Those are good memories, now that I can see through those first years after you were gone. I can remember them again.<br />
<br />
My 28-year old self knows what my 18-year old self did not know - that you gave us what you could, you gave us what you had to give. There are a great number of things about you that we'll never know. Pain and tears and joy and secrets and things of which I am sure you were ashamed.<br />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>And I never would tell you then</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>So I never will tell you now</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>All the things that break an old man down</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>The real truth is, I don’t know how</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>("Faithful Son" by Patty Griffin)</i></div>
<br />
<b>I am learning to love you now</b>, by this grace that comes only through the time and space of years and silence. And I am remembering, more clearly, that you did love us. You did often beam with pride when talking to others about us, and you gave to use the the things you knew, the things you took a lifetime to learn.<br />
<br />
My own regrets rise to the surface, too. That I did not take so many more things you would have given. That I did not yet know grace in a true enough way to extend it towards you. <br /><br />And so I know that I, too, will spend a lifetime learning to love.<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<i>(**I sat on the couch today, listening to Patty Griffin's new album "American Kid", and cried. I could see my grandfathers so clearly. They are gone now. But I can beginning to see them more clearly, now, than I ever did before.)</i></div>
<br />
<br />Abbye West Pateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11166835918211605656noreply@blogger.com1