The Empress' New Clothes

Not at all like the Emperor’s.
His robes glowed and glittered
but itched his arms.
Nothing hung right.
And in the end, they dissolved
in the true gaze of a child,
leaving the poor Emperor
as naked as a blue jay
without its feathers.
Nothing blue left.
The Empress, on the other hand,
chose real silk that really flowed
down the contours of her body,
that comforted as well as adorned,
that fit the reality of her person.

The Celts have a blessing
for when one puts on a new garment:
May you live and may you wear it
and may you wear seven more
even better than it.

As a daughter of the King,
I could make do
with a wardrobe like that.

Young Quaker artist from Africa

I realize that I’m walking the dangerous edge of a proud grandmother. But I think I have good reason to be proud. Gwen Emily Amahora Thomas, currently a senior at Newberg High School with only a few weeks before graduation, is sharing her art with the world. The lobby of Friendsview Retirement Community is displaying her African portraits, fruit of assignments from her AP art classes.

She describes her art in an essay accompanying the portraits:

“Home. That word has both enchanted me and haunted me my whole life. I was born and raised in Rwanda, Africa as one of the few white kids in the country. However, my skin color didn’t prevent me from finding my home in Africa. In recent years, I have had to leave my beloved home and live in America. Saying goodbye to my life-long friends, taking a last glimpse of my childhood home, and finally boarding that plane was the hardest thing I have ever done. But boarding a plane and living somewhere else doesn’t mean that I leave it behind. Rwanda will always be in my heart and a part of who I am. It’s no wonder that most of my art work reflects my love of my country. The portraits are all created as a reflection of the transition I was and am going through.

“I am currently a senior a Newberg High School. I spent my freshman and sophomore years at a boarding school in Kenya where my art began to improve. After graduation this June, I will be going to George Fox University to study nursing.”

Enjoy!

 Self portrait

Proud grandparents!

Damp but not defeated at Silver Falls

We decided to go anyway. The weather report predicted a 90% chance of rain, and in Oregon we learn to take that seriously. But we had made our reservations weeks ago, managing to get the very last tenting site available in Silver Falls State Park.

Piggy-backing on the end of a family reunion, the dates were not negotiable. And what’s a little rain to Oregonians?

Our son-in-law helped by loaning us their larger, more water-proof tent. And our brother-in-law kicked in my setting up his canopy over the tent. We pitched the tent on the highest ground at the site and hoped we’d be able to stay dry.

We enjoyed the first night, the sounds especially. It wasn’t just like being in a forest in the rain. We were in the middle of the trees, with the music of real rain all around us.

Our careful preparations worked. No outside water creeped into the tent. We stayed dry.

The next day showed us once again that you can’t always rely on weather reports. A window of clear skies prompted us to hike one of the waterfall loops. We walked for about six miles alongside a flowing Silver Creek, making our way from one waterfall to another. It was glorious, a sensual feast. On the last leg of our hike, the rain returned and we let ourselves enjoy it, all part of the adventure.

After supper, which we cooked and ate under our tarp, a make-shift kitchen, we entered the tent to prepare for sleep. It was then that I discovered that the water bottle I had left upright had tipped over and soaked the inside of my sleeping bag.

By then it was cold, rainy and dark. We needed to wait for morning to pack up, a day early, and head home. So we improvised once again and made it through the night.

Looking back, I’m grateful for the beauty, the adventure, and all the creative improvisations we came up with. We’ll so it again, probably consulting the weather reports.

But it’s ironic that after all our carefulness to make sure water didn’t get us from outside the tent, it finally defeated us from the inside, sending us home a day early. Through my carelessness. From my water bottle.

Surely this is a metaphor for some great life lesson.

But I think I’ll let it go. My good memories are more than enough for now.

Bolivia: From one extreme to another

Yesterday we came home to La Paz after a week in Santa Cruz, the lowlands! All that oxygen was wonderful, and our bodies rested in spite of the tropical heat and humidity. But when we got into our room here in La Paz, we found that the drinking water we had boiled and left in the pot on the stove had frozen. Not just a skim of ice, but one big ice cube. From one extreme to another! No wonder my body is confused.

We loved staying in Santa Cruz with our friends (also Friends) David and Arminda Tintaya and their girls. The family had just returned from a mission trip to India with Evangelical Friends Mission and they were bursting to talk about it. Many among Bolivian Friends are experiencing a revival of interest in missions. While in Santa Cruz we participated in the district’s first annual Congress of Missions, talking about missions in the history of the Bolivian Friends. Two of the Titnaya girls, Anabel and Anahi, are sensing a strong call to participate with God in mission, somewhere in the world.

Tintaya family, Santa Cruz

On our way home we flew closer to Mt. Illimani that I have ever been. It was a bit scary, but so beautiful.

The taxi ride from the airport to our room up in the Friends complex up on Max Paredes Street was another adventure of inching our way through traffic snarls, made worse by demonstrations down town.

The demonstrations have to do with the upcoming political referendum. This coming Sunday, everything will shut down in Bolivia. Everything but the poles, where the issue is whether the Bolivian constitution will be modified in order to let current President Evo Morales become president for life. That sounds as scary as flying too close to the Andes for comfort. People will vote either “Yes” or “No.” It’s up in the air as to which side will win, and with what consequences. It seems a little bit like theater-of-the-absurd, and more and more people here feel that way.

     We’ll wait and see. Like everyone else. Meanwhile, life goes on. With all its crazy beauty and dizzying extremes. Life goes on in the middle of the extremes, and its ordinariness is as beautiful as Mt. Illimani.

Through a mirror darkly

I have new eyes, and I couldn’t be more delighted. I can see individual leaves on distant trees and spot squirrels in the grass even before they move. The colors are more vivid than I have experienced for a long time. The light swimming through the forest is alive.

Put less poetically, my cataract removal/lens replacement surgeries were successful. It’s a new world out there, and I’m loving it.

Except when I look in the mirror.

When did I start getting so old looking? Where did these little lines and blemishes come from? Why do we have so many mirrors in this house? I feel the need to eliminate most of them.

And why does this matter so much? I’m probably only looking my age, so it’s all natural.

But it does matter. True confession. My surrounding youth culture does affect me.

I have, however, discovered that I have another mirror, one that tells me a better story.

It’s this: that even after 47 years of marriage, Hal still sometimes looks at me as if I’m the best thing he’s seen coming down the pike in a long long time. He doesn’t need to speak a word. His look says, “lovely, good, beautiful, chosen” even “gorgeous.”

Just possibly—I’m not totally sure about this—but just possibly the mirror in his eyes may be telling a deeper truth than that critical too bright square in the bathroom.

And I can decide which mirror to believe.

Quaker grey, Bolivian style

We’re home again, but I’m still under the spell of Bolivia. Certain images swim through my mind, and one of these is of Aymara women and their beautiful clothes. Here is one area where the Quaker testimony of plain clothes has not caught on. Cultural aesthetic values tend toward bright colors and glitter. Perhaps that has to do with the harshness of the natural context, at least on the high plains where most of our Friends originated.

A beautiful shawl tells people, “I’ve arrived. I’m important.” Even among Quaker women. It also tells people the family is prosperous enough to purchase one of these costly garments. And some of the shawls are homemade, of course—knitted, embroidered or appliqued.

If the Quaker value for understatement and plainness is to catch on here, it has to come from within the culture, not imposed from the outside. In the meantime, I, personally, enjoy the display.

Following are photos taken during yearly meeting or in a Sunday morning worship service. Some of the ladies are friends of mine, others are strangers.