Stuck in Blogger's Block

Although I have gone far and still have far to go, I have been tied in knots for this past year when it comes to writing my blogs. They are beginning to resemble those new spiral notebooks I would buy every new year and start writing a journal, only to abandon them and leave a lot of white pages. At least no trees have died because of my virtual publishing absence.

I have been working in fits and spurts on my family history. Every answered question leads to new discoveries and new questions. I have found Hugh McElyea in Robertson County TN for a longer period than I expected. I have also found John Burch there in 1840, but no other traces before 1850 to explain why he turns up without the mother of his boys in Missouri a decade later. And the Logan County KY genealogical archive that we visited last month was brimming with new details about my mother's Morgan and Paris ancestors. I have pictures, too.

Before this blogging anniversary month is out, I will post some of what I have found and my reflections on how learning about one's ancestors really can inform the present.

The Myth of Self -Reliance

Phlox is an old-fashioned flower, one I'm privileged to have in my yard now because a former resident planted wild phlox as part of a natural butterfly garden. I remember pink phlox growing in my grandmother McElyea's perennial border when I was a child. As I have spent the last year looking up facts about my great-grandmothers and their families, sometimes tracking down where they might have lived and taking pictures, sorting through sometimes contradictory data, I'm slowly beginning to see my project acquire a shape and direction. I'm starting to feel like it's time to start to write. But while I am still thinking about that, I thought I might start writing some short impressions that have come to me as I've thought about what I have learned about them. And today, I realized that the lives of all four were at one time or another dependent on family cooperation, and sometimes the kindness of strangers. Here in America we celebrate the self-reliance of our ancestors and sometimes lament its lack today. But then I considered these items from my research:

• When Jesse and Emma eloped to Memphis from Arkansas in December 1891, one of their witnesses was a neighbor their age, who may have helped arrange the trip in addition to being the Best Man. I don't think they could have pulled it off on their own in the middle of winter.
• When Belle and Roscoe moved to Oklahoma Territory in 1903 after their tobacco crop failed in Kentucky, they brought with them some of Belle's younger brothers. They gave these young men a start they badly needed, being the youngest of 11.
  
• When my grandmother, one of Belle and Roscoe's daughters, had graduated from Normal School, it was a postcard from a family friend, the young minister in Sayre, that told her about a teaching job in that relatively new town. She took the job, met my grandfather, and the young minister performed the wedding a couple of years later.
• When Martha's sister was widowed in the Civil War, she moved back into her father's house with her infant daughter. Later, on her own and re-married, she took in to her household her younger brother who had never married.
• When Martha was widowed in 1901, she moved to Lockwood from the farm at Mt. Vernon and kept house for her unmarried daughter who was a printer and publisher in that small town. After this daughter died unexpectedly, another of her daughters, recently widowed herself, invited Martha to live with her.
• Sarah and her husband William were charter members of the First Christian Church in Everton, Mo., and freely supported it. The church was in a community where people helped one another in hard times.
  
• When Belle and Roscoe were in their 80s, never having become eligible for Social Security and before the existence of Medicare, they went on "general relief" and were eligible to receive a monthly supply of "commodities" from a federal government program that bought up agricultural surplus to help stabilize farm prices. That supplemented the canned goods my grandmother took to them, and what my aunt, who lived with them, could afford to buy from her meager retirement income. This couple had, in their prime, offered a meal to every traveling preacher who came to town, and in the horse and buggy days, saw that every guest's horse received a fine ration of oats.
  

These are just a few of the instances I can think of. When families moved westward, they often went not only as a clan, but also in a group with their former neighbors. Frequently the men were bonded to guarantee a son's or brother's or nephew's land purchase. Sometimes their generosity was costly; my grandfather Mc, who finally was able to buy his own gasoline service station in the spring of 1929, hung on through the early part of the Great Depression but finally lost it in late 1931, because he had extended too much credit to his neighbors, unable to cut them off when they needed gas for transportation to look for work. So "self reliance" is mostly a myth. In my ancestors' time, the interdependence was mostly between friends and family members. As families have grown smaller, and jobs and careers more demanding and farther from home, the circle of dependence has grown wider--the city, the state, even the country.

Today I got an e-mail warning me that the Other Party wants to take over Congress so it can start cutting Social Security. There are many competing claims about how solvent the system is, and for how long, and the best way to "fix" it. I won't add to the debate here, except to say I think the fix is simpler than most politicians are willing to support. But I am grateful that both of my parents received Social Security benefits (and Medicare) when they retired, after years of work and contributing to the system that sustained THEIR parents. I know that my contributions during my working years may have helped to support my parents, and others of their generation. I'm counting on the contributions of those who are working today to help support me and Norm, something we earned during our own years of working and contributing. Sometimes I feel the rhetoric aimed at "cutting" Social Security sounds like it is coming from those who never wanted it in the first place, because they think it is somehow un-American, a kind of welfare, even socialistic. They think everyone should provide only for themselves and not owe their neighbor, or the generation that came before them or the ones that come after, anything. I don't agree with that view, and I don't agree with that interpretation of our nation's social history. Back in the rosy "self-reliant" days, most people (at least, most of my ancestors) were anything but. And yet they built communities and sustained institutions that persist to this day.

Trail of the 4 Great Grandmothers

On our trip in June to Southwest Oklahoma, in addition to tracing my mother's childhood roots, I was searching for the burial place of the only one of my 4 great-grandmothers I hadn't found. Earlier this year I had looked for Emma J. McElyea and learned she was buried in Sayre Doxey Cemetery. After we got to Sayre, it was easy to find on a hill about three miles east of town. Doxey was a one-time rival town, named for one of the earliest ranchers in the area.

Right near the entrance, I found these tiny yellow flowers blooming. I don't yet know what they are, but they seem to be the same as the larger flowers on the cemetery sign. There has to be a story there.





We went out to the cemetery in the evening on the day we arrived in Sayre. We thought if we couldn't find a marker, we would try again the next day after getting a map from the town funeral home. But we headed for a part that seemed older--Emma died suddenly in 1914 and Jesse lived until 1950--and after about 15 minutes, we spied it. Their marker appears newer than 1950, perhaps placed by one of their daughters. It is out of the same red granite that we found in the Wichita Mountains on our trip.

Jesse and Emma are in block 4, not far from the south entrance to the cemetery. Their grave has a view to the west across part of the North Fork of the Red River valley, and it is very peaceful. I know they came from Arkansas to this land between 1901 and 1910, when my grandpa Earl was a young boy. I wish I knew more about their life and maybe someday I'll uncover more information.

Two days later we were heading for Tulsa, and we stopped at the Stroud Cemetery so I could leave a bouquet for my great grandmother Belle Paris. I know this cemetery and plot well, having visited it as a child and being present at 5 burials in it--both great grandparents, my grandparents Mary and Earl, and my Aunt Bess. Belle is one of two great-grandmothers I knew in life. She died in 1962, just shy of age 98.


The two families -- McElyea and Paris --
joined in 1912 when Earl McElyea married Mary Paris. Mary had gone to Sayre to teach, and I think that's where she met Earl. Their daughter was Frances, my mother. The Paris plot is bounded by three large Abelia bushes, and their small white blooms were attracting a lot of bees. Mary planted them after Earl died. I helped her and later my mother weed, prune and water them. The 4th one didn't make it but three of them are now taller than I am. We should have had pruning tools with us! (Note to self: next time.....)

As we closed this gap in my quest to visit the graves of all four great-grandmothers, I realized something remarkable. ALL of them lived, died and are buried along the storied Mother Road, old U.S. Highway 66. Sayre is the farthest west, then Stroud. The great-grandmothers on my father's side are buried in Missouri. Sarah Gilmore Brown is in the Springfield cemetery although her husband is in San Antonio. I visited her and heard her stories when I was a child. And Martha Stanley Burch is in a small country cemetery, Salem, in Lawrence County just north of Mt. Vernon. Of course, US 66 didn't exist when they moved into new country from their homes in Arkansas, Tennessee, or Kentucky. I know the ones in Oklahoma came by train. The all moved in order to start over: Emma had buried her youngest daughter, 7 months old; Belle and her husband moved west after their tobacco crop failed in Kentucky; Sarah and William sought a better farm; Martha and her husband left a slave state for one that was caught up in border conflicts during the Civil War. All of them lived into their upper 90s, except Emma, who died at age 48. Emma, of course, is the one who started my quest. I am looking forward to putting their stories into a narrative that will trace their lives.

Christmas Tree Family Album

Over the years, our Christmas tree, Norm's and mine, has evolved into a family album of sorts. When I go back through photos, as I did this summer looking for images for the 40th anniversary celebration, there seemed to be a few constants for picture taking: Christmas decorations, pets, fronts of houses, and garden plants. This is our tree as it looked on Christmas morning, 2008, before we dug into the presents.







The oddly tilted foil star on top of the tree is a rescued ornament from one of my mother's housecleaning sprees. I know, Unclutterer says that when something new comes in, something old must go out. Mother practiced that. When my parents got an angel for their tree topper, this star, which I remember from my earliest days, was consigned to the trash. Except I brought it to my home and it has topped our trees for 40 Christmases.

Mother always liked this funny little styrofoam snowman. I don't know what it's sentimental value was for her, but it is one of her ornaments I kept. The pipe cleaners are really faded, but once on the tree, it's handy to fill in one of those gaps that always appears right in front!







My grandmother Burch gave me this plastic bird off of her tree when I was a little girl. I recall her tree in the house on North Florence only dimly. I know it had big bright lights (probably C7) and a whole flock of these birds. It goes on a high branch every year.


Birds were popular in Norm's family, too. We acquired this one at the family auction at the Linville reunion in 2008. Unfortunately we have lost the notes about where it came from: Norm's mother, or one of his grandmothers. But it is glass, and has a spring loaded clip to cling to a branch. This was its first year on our tree.

When I was a girl, I always looked forward to a visit with Cousin Eunice, who was a relative of my Grandpa McElyea. About the time I graduated from college, she presented me with three ornaments she had made herself, with beads, sequins and pins on styrofoam balls. One is blue, one is silver, and this red one completes the set. They go on the tree every year in her memory.




One of the last letters I wrote to Santa Claus was on Christmas Eve of a year when snow unexpectedly showed up in the forecast. I think I was 7 or 8. I asked for a last minute change to my list, if Santa had a sled in his sleigh. Amazed, I read a note from Santa the next morning, neatly printed at the bottom of my letter. He said he was out of sleds, but he was sure I would get one for my birthday in January. And I did. Upstairs in my Dad's metal box of precious letters he saved is that letter. Not long after Norm and I were married, Daddy made this wooden replica of a 1950s sled as an ornament for me. It gets wrapped in bubble wrap when it is put away and always has a very visible spot near the top of our tree. And I start to cry every time I hang it.

There are many more family ornaments on our tree, but in time we had to start making our own memories. Christmas of 1968, I wanted a silver and red theme for the small Scotch Pine we bought (for about $7, I think.) Being on a tight budget, we strung popcorn and cranberries, bought red and white candy canes, and finished the tree with these pine cones. We picked them up in a cemetery in Pittsburg KS about two blocks from our apartment. We invested in a can of silver spray paint that must have also been a wood preservative, for they are still sound, 40 years later. Originally they were strung with silver and red metallic ribbon but after it gave out, I restrung them with red.

A few years after the pine cones, we were in Colorado and the church Norm served while he was in seminary had an Advent workshop. I was in charge of a children's craft room. We made these ornaments out of the old cardboard egg cartons, glue, tempera paint and gold glitter. It's another hardy reminder that one can create something of lasting beauty and memory out of the most everyday things, even things some people would throw away.

This Christmas, like all Christmases that occur after all of your ancestors have passed on, was bittersweet. But I decided that I would put everything in our storage boxes on the tree, that I wanted to remember as much as I could of our individual histories and our history together. I know of three women for whom Christmas 2007 turned out to be their last one. I got to thinking that at this time of life, there's no point in "saving" some things for next year. If they ever had value, they have value now, and I will enjoy them now, and hopefully for many more Christmases to come.

Retreat 2008 Part II

On Saturday morning of the retreat, I followed the voice that called me to go outside for a walk. Sometimes I have to go to meetings at retreat centers, and we stay too busy, or the weather is too bad, for me to explore outside. This weekend, I wanted to feel my feet on the path, look at the sky and the distance, marvel at small things, and breathe the air. So while others were painting and singing, I left the dining hall and walked first to the river, then up the road toward the hill cabins.






The Castor River was full, but not out of its banks. The day was over cast but bright. At this point, the river flows from south (right) to north (left). My long fascination with bodies of water gets a "fix" from watching the current in small rivers like this one. As I walked back up toward the road, I noticed several vultures circling in the sky overhead. They flew silently, and I wondered if they were hunting or if they had already spied a meal.

Small things are easier to spot when you aren't in a hurry. This insect was on the wall inside the dining hall as I exited. It is about a month (Sept. 20) until the average first frost date. I don't know how this one deals with winter, or if it even does. Humans anticipate these climate changes, but creatures, for the most part, just react to them. Certainly they have less to worry about.




One creature that will hibernate when days grow colder is this lizard, who is cold-blooded. On this warm fall day, though, it was darting through leaves, making a rustling noise. It paused on the flat rock, its markings making it invisible to predators above. If you look closely, you can see it on the flat rock in the center, just to the right of the twig that lies diagonally across the picture. (Try clicking in the photo to enlarge it.)

Farther up the hill, I found this hawk feather lying next to the road. Another reminder of change of seasons as the bird molts and gets new feathers for winter. Hawks will perch and hunt all winter in these parts, staking out territory from a fence post or tree top. They often command several square miles, depending on the food supply. Thinking about the birds I saw this day, the vultures, a couple of hawks, several blue jays and some chickadees, I recall how the Native Americans cherished birds as messengers of the Great Spirit itself. The naturalist in me wants to return to observing such signs more intently and intentionally.

Fall is fungus time. Toadstools, mushrooms, whatever you want to call them, are abundant. At home, Norm digs them up as they sprout along the lines of decaying roots of long-dead trees. In the deep shade of the forest next to the camp road, many small toadstools flourished. This one was most spectacular. The photo doesn't do justice to the scale of the thing. It was almost a foot tall and about 10 inches in diameter, and the yellow was brighter than the picture conveys. I've never seen such a huge fungus in my life.

The hill section of Orchard Crest is full of native black walnut trees. I don't know if they were planted as part of the original fruit orchard here or not. No fruit trees remain, but the nut trees are everywhere. The leaves and nuts on this one made a nice contrast to the darker forest behind.

Up close, from the other side, the bright green husks of the walnuts glow in the shade. Often this delicate yellow green is a color of spring, but in a walnut grove, it means harvest is almost here. Calling all squirrels!






Dogwoods, lovely in spring with a cloud of white blossoms along the edge of a forest, provide bright red fruit, food for wildlife, as fall arrives. In the city, the berries are prized by mockingbirds. I'm not sure which forest birds prefer them, but if I had not needed to get back to the hall for lunch and worship, I might have just waited to see.

Walking, watching, waiting, thinking, listening to the thoughts coming into my mind--for years I have done this, solitary but not lonely, as a way to try to connect with nature, the Creator, my higher power, the indwelling Spirit of life in all things. It is a way honored by many ancient people, many Native Americans. Today, I learn that this isn't laziness or "wool gathering" on my part--an accusation I often heard when I was young. It is the way of knowing of the Naturalist, as valid as reading and writing, creating logical sequences, feeling the spirit through music, organizing visual arts and space, being in motion, interacting with friends, centering in meditation. I'm grateful to Patrice, to the Southeast Gateway Women, to Orchard Crest, and to the One who led me to take this journey farther down the path of faith.

Retreat 2008 Part I

Another year, another retreat for women at Orchard Crest Camp. This gathering of 40 women from as far south as Kennett, as far west as St. Charles and from several St. Louis area churches took place the weekend of Sept. 19-20. I'm just now getting around to editing the pictures and reflecting on the experience. Here, the group gathers in a long oval inside the dining hall for the closing worship, led by Devoree C. of Webster Groves CC.

I started loving to go on retreats when I was in college and a member of Disciples Student Fellowship. Retreat experiences have formed much of my spiritual base throughout my life. I also love going to camp, and this area retreat for women has both spiritual enrichment and a chance to spend about 24 hours in a rustic setting, close to a wilder kind of nature than I usually find in my own back yard. This outdoor chapel is the signature building at Orchard Crest Camp, but we held meetings indoors because it was damp (a week after Ike's drenching) and a tad cool.

Cabins at Orchard Crest do have indoor plumbing, but they are still a little basic. The nearby river makes the valley humid, and the cabins are often prone to mold. Somehow, I managed to escape without my allergies being riled up. Must be part of the spell of the place.

Our theme was "Listening for the Voice of God" and the keynote speaker was Patrice R., whom I have known for more than two decades. She noted that she suffers from impaired hearing, and suggested there are other ways to know God than listening. She led us through a review of multiple intelligences, or the different ways we receive information, or know something. Some of the ways are verbal, numerical, musical, visual, and kinetic. There are social intelligences and inward or contemplative intelligences. There is even a naturalist (observing) intelligence, which I claimed as one of my ways of knowing.

Saturday morning we had an activity time, where women could pursue the intelligences that seemed most useful to them. This group (Patrice is at the right) used musical expression, going through the hymnbook and harmonizing a capella for close to an hour. Others enjoyed just listening, or chiming in now and then.

A craft activity engaged the visual intelligence women. Ruth B., who is a mainstay at retreats, chose to decorate a birdhouse in the shape of a church. A large number of the women did engage in this craft. Some of them sat together at tables and collaborated, showing that social interaction was important for them.

Others, like Ruth and Linda, here, took a more solitary, introspective approach. We had other activities including creating a spiritual autobiography. Mine is barely begun, but the process taught me something important about myself. You'd think, since I've been a writer and a "word" person all my life, I would have started writing. But I started instead with a timeline. And I was very particular about getting main years written on it, and getting items in order as they happened. Who knew I was a numbers person?

All in all, the retreat was helpful because it opened my mind to new ways of knowing God in addition to simply listening for a voice. I realized that I am primarily a word and visuals person (as my three blogs attest), but numbers (logical order) and music are also important to how I experience life and how I express myself. And kinetics, or moving around, can't be totally left out. Sometimes I just want to dance, or go for a walk. Usually I choose solitary, introspective activities over social interactions but as I've gotten older, I'm more comfortable in groups (although not yet in crowd scenes.) Yet the greatest revelation of all from this weekend was a validation of an "8th" way of knowing, that of the naturalist, or the person who observes and derives conclusions from the environment. It's possible I'm sure to be an indoor naturalist, but on this weekend, the outdoors called my name. More about that in Retreat 2008 Part II.

Still Far, Very Far, To Go

Today is a milestone of sorts, for the first installment of Thursday's Child was posted on August 15, 2006. This little blog of mine is more deliberate and reflective than Home Stories, and I haven't done much with it in the past year, but I haven't abandoned it. If you have checked it in the past, drop in again sometime in the next month and you will see some new things. In the past 11 months, the energy I would have put into Thursday's Child has gone into another blog instead, Compton Cares Update, as part of my contribution to a fundraising effort for my church. The updates on that project will now take less time, so I plan to spend more time on family history and reflections, my original intent when I started Thursday's Child in addition to Home Stories.

One thing that has happened is that another former member of Rogers Heights Christian Church in Tulsa found my entries about the church's closing in 2007 and wrote to me. She has since written her own impressions of the church of our childhood on her own blog. You can check it out by clicking here and here.

See you again soon.

Reflections from Retreat

Orchard Crest Camp belongs to the Southeast Gateway Area of the Christian Church - Disciples of Christ. It is located east of Fredericktown on the Castor River. The cabins have bathrooms and electricity, but the entire atmosphere is still rustic. I spend the past weekend there, at a women's retreat. I've been on retreats there before, and I've counseled at summer camp. This event is about the last one of the year as the camp will close down for winter in October. Already the trees show signs of fall approaching. Yet Orchard Crest is a welcoming place, and it is blissfully out of range of highway or aircraft noise. On a warm fall night, the only sounds are from crickets and tree frogs. By day, scores of bird species still flit in the trees and skim the river. On this weekend we were given several times to meditate and write down our thoughts. Here are some of mine.

The early morning sunlight reflects off the quiet waters of the Castor River. I'm reminded of Thoreau's famous line: "Time is but the river that I go fishing in." No fishing today, but flowing rivers always create for me a metaphor of eternity. So I walked by the river and thought about time.

Time: I don't have enough of it to do it right. I feel rushed, then I can't move. The train is coming and I just sit on the tracks and watch it coming toward me, unable to move. Hospitality needs movement and also the ability to just BE in a moment of time. I really need to let go of the concept of time, the constraints of time. Standing by the river that looks still but is inexorably moving, I wonder about the connections of time and eternity. I need to trust the reality of an eternity that can still contain my time and others' time. And still I need solitude or silent time because I can't think or feel in the midst of chaos.

Around the camp grounds were several meditation stations. The theme was centered around sayings of Jesus. As I visited at each one, I wrote these thoughts:

Jesus is the rock. I can hear a line from a hymn: "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all else is sinking sand." There are a lot of times I have been on shifting sand, if not sinking. But rocks aren't always solid, either. The rocks in the creek bed shift and tumble. How did the vulnerable, wounded man called Jesus become a rock?

Jesus is living water. Why did he say living water? We spend a lot of money to make sure there is nothing living in our drinking water before we call it safe. We know that water makes life possible, but we don't always think of it as having life on its own. Come to think of it, aren't our bodies mostly water? I forget the percentage. And we are living. Is the water in us living water? Is Jesus' image of the living water a metaphor of the incarnation? Jesus is the living water. WE are mostly living water. Jesus is within us. As Cynthia Hale said in a sermon at Quadrennial back in 1998, All that you are seeking, you have within you. Right now.

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Will a twig of pipe vine be enough to remind me of the pure energy that sends out the vines of the forest: grape, pipe vine, Virginia creeper, trumpet, poison ivy, clematis? The vines run, climb, twist, furl-- tendril after tendril until frost cuts them down, and then they rest for a season before budding again. So we don't have to grow and bloom and bear fruit constantly, just in our own season.

Jacque Foster, my pastor and the retreat leader, asked us to imagine ourselves in the place where we go for centering quiet, and then to imagine that Jesus met us there. What would we say to each other? I thought of my garden at home. I'm not sure where this following dialogue came from, but I wrote it down as it played out in my head:

Jesus: This is a lovely garden. Did you plant it?
Me: Yes...well..some of it..others did most of the work. But the plants were yours.
Jesus: I know.
Me: Why are you here?
Jesus: Why not? Aren't I supposed to be everywhere?
Me: I guess I mean, how did you find me? I forgot to invite you. I should have invited you long ago.
Jesus: Why didn't you?
Me: I think I just forgot. I'm bad about worrying or concentrating on one thing at a time, and I forget everything else. Even you. And I know I'm not supposed to forget you.
Jesus: What would help you remember?
Me: I don't know. I am getting more forgetful. Worried about becoming old. Tired. Losing interest in things I have always loved.
Jesus: What about the slant of light through the branches, or the flash of a hummingbird's wings or a sweet scent of clematis?
Me: Yes, I know you send these reminders to me. And I thank you. I thank you.

Rogers Heights Christian Church: 1945-2007

Note: This post contains a correction added on 8/22/08.

August 26, 2007 was the final worship service at Rogers Heights Christian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I grew up. My parents, Jim and Frances, were members of another Christian church when they were recruited in the winter of 1945 to help start a new congregation on the east side of the city, across from the "new" Will Rogers High School that had opened in 1939. I recall being in the "nursery" class that met in Ms. Dessa Bedford's home, and I have a fond memory of my three-year old self drawing pictures with my finger in the condensation on her window panes the next spring. In the summer of 1946, men of the church laid a foundation for a simple rectangular building that would be worship and fellowship space until 1949, when the sanctuary (above, with the steeple) would be completed. My dad and the other men built that first church building with their own hands. When the charter closed in 1947, my parents' names were on it, as well as my grandparents Hugh and Ada Burch, and my aunt Martha, daddy's younger sister. My name is not on the charter, because our denomination (it was a Brotherhood back then!) practices believers' baptism and I of course was not yet of age to make such a decision.

Over the next five decades, more structures would be built and added on to those two original buildings. Where we once faced north to worship, by the time of the closing, we faced south. Where once simple amber glass in casements illuminated the sanctuary, in the 1980s stained glass windows , such as this one behind the communion table at the last service, replaced them. Pews replaced the plastic chairs that had replaced the metal folding chairs that had replaced the wooden folding chairs! Paneling covered the concrete block walls. The bell still hung in the steeple, and on the last day, someone went behind the pulpit, through the prayer room, grabbed the rope and rang it, clear and true, one more time.

Why did the church decide to close at this time? An article in the Tulsa World quoted one of the few remaining charter members as saying the membership, once in the hundreds, had declined to about 15 active folks, not enough to carry on the mission of a church or support a minister. The area was not growing, and demographics were not in favor of a progressive, mainline church in that part of Tulsa any more. After several months, they decided to plan to close and turn over the assets and property to the Oklahoma Christian Church Foundation. The Rogers Heights Christian Church endowment will support other missions and church starts, carrying on the legacy of this faithful congregation into perpetuity. I think my father, and the other founders, would approve, and when everyone gathered in a circle around the sanctuary at the close of the service, I told them so.

In this view, five different roof lines are visible, and they show the stages of the church's growth. At the lower far right is the original little building that housed the charter congregation. It was the site of fellowship dinners, Sunday morning worship, Wednesday prayer meetings, and more. A house stood on the lot where the parking lot is now, with room for the church office and Sunday school. In that tiny building, those first winters, a free-standing gas stove heated the space. I remember backing up too close to it one cold night at a fellowship dinner and charring the backside of a new winter wool coat! The section with the steeple came next, dedicated in 1949. In the mid 1950s the three-story education building in the background was built, and the "bridge" section (the part with the higher roof line) connecting it to the sanctuary was added. The spring I was baptized, 1956*, the baptistry was a copper tank sitting on the grass between the two unconnected buildings, and my baptism took place on a Sunday afternoon at East Side Christian instead.

*Update on 8/22/08: After corresponding with Patricia Ferguson (see comment #3) we discovered a discrepancy in our memories about our baptisms. I finally went back and checked and I was baptized on Mother's Day of 1954, not 1956, at East Side. I know it was because our baptistry was unavailable, but I'm no longer sure if it was because of the construction mentioned above. Thanks, Tricia, for reading, commenting and reconnecting!

The final building addition in the foreground of this picture took place in the 1970s, expanding the first building into a proper fellowship hall with a spacious kitchen and accessible restrooms.

But a church, any church, is so much more than its buildings. Mostly it's memories for me, because Rogers Heights was my only church from the time I was on the cradle roll until I graduated from college and moved to Kansas to start my teaching career. This is where I learned the names of 66 books of the Bible and understood that the Bible was a library of writings of faith, not simply an infallible "word." This is where I learned to sing "Jesus Loves the Children of the World"--red, brown, yellow, black and white. This is where, after I was in high school, I taught the second grade Sunday school class and played piano for singing in Children's church, slipping back into the sanctuary just in time for communion and one of Lloyd Lambert's sermons. After I was in college, I was invited to give the Youth Sunday sermon one year.

As children, one of the boys and I kept the church librarian, a single lady named Edna Mary Letson, in poverty as she undoubtedly bought with her own money the two new books a month she added to feed our appetites for new stories to read. (At the church's 50th anniversary in 1995, Norm and I visited and I went up to the library in the educational building and found the row of orange-bound biographies of famous people. I opened one and pulled the card out of the pocket and yes, there was my name!) Knowing that my name was still on a card in a book in that library somehow made me feel still connected to Rogers Heights, although my last contact with most members of the congregation was in the summer of 1968 when a group of the women gave me a bridal shower. Shortly after that my parents moved and transferred to East Side, which was closer to them.

Because of Rogers Heights, I entered adulthood with a useful grounding in biblical history and the Christian faith. I knew my baptism had not been into one congregation, but into the universal church. During the next seven years of college and work, I would undergo the usual periods of young adult questioning, and doubt, and begin the recovery and re-creation of my faith. Because of the love and encouragement I had always known at Rogers Heights, I continued to attend church, first in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and then in Pittsburg, Kansas. Somewhere in those early years at Rogers Heights, I got the idea that if I persisted, even if I thought I had lost touch with God, God would somehow find me.

It was a very bittersweet experience, the closing and decommissioning of my childhood church. I found out about it in an e-mail my cousin sent me by chance, mentioning the article in the Tulsa World that appeared on Aug. 18. Although I wanted to be there, I would not have made a special trip, but Norm and I found ourselves in Tulsa that week anyway when the same cousin's mother-in-law died and Norm was to conduct the memorial service. It seemed a sign that we should stay over, and I'm glad that we did.

The "little church on the corner" belongs to history now, but it will live on in the memories I have and in the bequest it has given to the larger church. I have said that the death in my cousin's family and our trip to take part in the service had seemed a sign that we should be there for the closing of Rogers Heights. Imagine my astonishment when, at the close of the service, we all repeated the same words of Isaiah that had been the text for the service for my cousin's mother-in-law three days earlier:

For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field
shall clap their hands.
Isaiah 55:12

A Blogging Milestone

This week is an anniversary for this blog and its companion. The first post to Home Stories appeared on Aug. 11, 2006 and the first entry on Thursday's Child is dated Aug. 15, 2006. So a year has passed, and I have learned that blogging requires some self discipline, energy and creativity that I don't always have. But I'll continue whenever something needs to be said.

August 15 is also the birth date of one of my great grandmothers, Paralee Belle Morgan Paris. She was born in 1864 and she died in 1962 at the age of 98. For all of the 19 years of my life to that point, she was old, forgetful and eventually an invalid, but stories about her younger days are intriguing. When she was barely 20, she married a tobacco farmer named Roscoe Paris, of whom her parents did not approve, in 1884. Evidence suggests an elopement. She apparently was a feminist before her time. When her younger daughter (my grandmother) was born in 1890, she told Roscoe "no more babies." Belle had been the oldest of 11 and she didn't want to be bedridden from childbearing like her mother. The family moved to Oklahoma Territory in 1903 and became part of the pioneer settler movement that created the 46th state. I have much more to write about her when I get the 4 Great Grandmothers project underway. For now, happy 143rd, grandma Belle!

What's with the numbers in the picture, you ask? Well, Norm and I were in the Missouri Botanical Garden gift shop a month or so ago and we purchased the lovely ceramic tile numerals and the frame to hold them as an early anniversary (or belated housewarming) present for ourselves. Six years after our move to this address, we decided to upgrade and personalize our house number. So now you know where we live.

Celebrating a Birthday and a Baby

Back in July, my cousin Mike celebrated one of those milestone birthdays, and Norm and I went to Tulsa to join in the festivities. There were several presents, but the one Mike seemed to enjoy playing with the most was his new grandson, Jason, who was 6 weeks old at the time of the party. When I look at this picture, I'm reminded of myself at 4 or 5 years old, meeting Mike when he was a baby and falling in love with him at first sight. It's amazing to think we have both made it to this age. Happy 60th, cous!

Jason is a happy, friendly baby who took time out for a nap on his grandma Debbie's chest while the rest of us indulged in the barbecued brisket, pulled pork and spareribs that Mike cooked earlier in the day in his smoker. Now that's a rare man who will cook the main course for his own birthday dinner!

Jason even spent a little quality time with cousin Judi. Here he looks a little dubious. He's probably not used to seeing that much gray hair! We all enjoyed the hospitality of Debbie's sister Cari and her husband, Jack, as well as the company of their daughter Amy and her son Lucus (4 months) and Mike and Debbie's daughter Felicia and her husband Jonathon and Jason's older brother Kevin, plus Debbie and Cari's brother Tim. Debbie has some stories on her blog (Debide's View) about family and baseball which explain why Tim was in town for that week as well.

We are so glad we got to visit with all of Mike and Debbie's family on this trip. Mike and I grew up as only children in Tulsa, separated by 4 years in age. Our families celebrated holidays as well as spent many Sunday nights together. Originally I had four cousins: Jerry died in military service during the Vietnam era, and the two girls who grew up in California, Linda and Robin, have pursued separate life paths: I haven't seen either of them in decades, which I regret. For all practical purposes, Mike is my only living relative, and the only person living with whom I have memories of a shared childhood. So both of his grandsons--Kevin and Jason--are precious to me.

In subsequent posts, I'm going to look more closely at (mostly my) family history and trace some of the the Burch and Brown, McEleya and Paris family lore. I got a start on our return trip from Tulsa, as we explored courthouses and cemeteries in a search for two of my four great-grandmothers. But that's the next story.

New Links

Just a short note that I finally got around to adding some favorite blogs to the Links section in the sidebar. Among them are Doug's blog commenting on Southern Gospel; my pastor's blog, a blog by Norm's niece Debbie and a brand new blog by my cousin Debi. I check these every day and enjoy them all. To add these links in the template I'm using actually involves tinkering under the hood of the blog template and correctly typing one line of html tags for each link-- so I'm feeling rather smug that I accomplished the task and they actually seem to work!

Comments Are Welcome

This morning in a group at church, my pastor mentioned the post about "Life Lists and Lessons" . Then two other people in the group piped up that they had read it, too. Wow. It's great to know that I'm not just throwing words (and pictures) into cyberspace the way a person stranded on a deserted island tosses a note into a bottle and sets it adrift. Please, though, if you have any reactions, suggestions, questions or comments--feel free to leave a comment or even send me an e-mail. Part of the blog experience is to have a conversation, so if I've said anything worth talking about, please let me know, now and then. Otherwise, I feel like I did at summer camp in the seventh grade, waiting for mail call and no letters for me today.

If you wish to leave a comment, just click on the "comment" link below each post and simply type in the window on the page that comes up. You don't need a Blogger/Google identity to comment. You can post as Other (click the button near the bottom of the comment page) leaving a first name or nickname. Or you can post as Anonymous and let me guess! Click the orange "Publish Your Comment" button and you are done. Your e-mail address is never collected or posted. Or if you have a reply that you prefer that the rest of the world not read, you can send me an e-mail. If you don't know my address already, there is a link for e-mailing me on my profile page. Just click on "view my complete profile" near the top of the blog to get there.

Now that the school year is over (yes, I came out of retirement to teach one class--silly me) I hope to publish on Thursday's Child more often. Talk to you soon!

Life Lists and Lessons

Earlier this week, Norm was going through a stash of saved birthday and anniversary cards, and he came across a list of Life Goals I had made on Sept. 6, 1975. Back in those days, it was common for a workshop leader to tell you to write down your goals if you wanted to accomplish them. So on or about Labor Day of that year, while I was working part-time at a newspaper and still homesick for the Ozarks and the Rocky Mountains after moving to the Big City, I made a list of 44 items in green ink on a blank church bulletin.

Of course, I lost track of the list and hadn't seen it in at least a decade, but a month or so ago I had wondered about it. Maybe that thought is what helped bring it to the surface. Anyway, I had a good laugh at some of the items, and felt nostalgia for some others. If I had worked at the list and accomplished one a year, I could look forward to total victory sometime in the year 2019, or around my 76th birthday! But the truth is, some of these goals have long been out of reach, and others have been supplanted by different dreams. Here is the list, with those that I did accomplish marked with an asterisk:
1. Climb to the top of Gray's Peak, Colo. (I got to within 1300 feet of the summit in 1972 and wanted to go back and finish the job. Alas, not.)
2. Camp in the Bridger Wilderness in Wyoming.
3. Visit Alaska and Hawaii.
4. Visit all 48 contiguous states. (So far I've made it to 25.)
5. Drive a truck.
6. Publish a book.
*7. Float on the Current River and the Buffalo River.
8. Publish a newspaper
9. Ride cross-country on a bicycle.
10. Have two children.
11. Live on a farm of 10 acres or more.
12. Go up in a hot air balloon.
13. Visit Yellowstone, Sequoia, and Grand Canyon national parks. (I went to the Grand Canyon with my parents in 1960, but wanted to go again and to the North rim this time.)
14. Ride the Delta Queen to New Orleans. (After taking the Huck Finn to the JB Bridge, I think that's as far as I'll go.)
15. Hike the Appalachian Trail. (Will maybe a mile, if I can manage it, count?)
16, Go on a cross-country ski trip.
*****17. Make a quilt. (At last, something!)
18. Refinish an old piece of furniture.
19. Have a craft or yarn shop.
20. Visit Mexico.
*21 Visit Ireland.(I was there in 1967. But I want to go again.)
23. Lead a Girl Scout Troop.
23. Own or manage a camp.
24. Become a campcraft instructor.
25. Qualify for Red Cross First Aid or Lifesaving. (Got the first aid, also CPR. No water stuff.)
26. Get a first class radio license.
27. Operate a ham radio.
28. Learn how to tune up a car. (Kind of obsolete now. I did manage to gap some spark plugs.)
29. Read all the works of William Faulkner.
30. Raise Christmas trees.(On that 10-acre farm, no doubt.)
31. Study herb lore and raise a herb garden. (Do pots of mint and lavender and basil count?)
32. Build a greenhouse.
33. Build a tree house.
34. Trim a tree.
35. Raise all my own fruits and vegetables.
36. Become a vegetarian.
37. Go on a round trip to the moon. (Remember, the first moon landing was only 6 years earlier.)
38. Write a novel.
39. Win a literary prize.
40. Visit an Indian reservation.
41. Visit the birthplaces of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. (So far, the parents.)
42. Get a copyright or a patent.
43. Build a log cabin.
44. Ride a train through Glenwood Canyon, Colo.

Wow. What ambition. I'm amazed that I once had such athletic inclinations. A lot of these ran to outdoor activities, or gardening, or self-sufficiency, which was a big theme in the 1970s. As you can see, there aren't many asterisks. But I did set other goals and accomplish some of them. That is a story for another day. The photos here are from the campus of my alma mater, the University of Arkansas. Near the old Student Union, a bald cypress that was there in the 1960s during my student days still broods over the sidewalk, and it now has a plaque at its base, for special recognition of its longevity. If trees could only talk, the tales it could tell! And the Arkansas tradition of Senior Walk continues, with the name of each graduate etched in concrete. I'm there twice; below is my name from 1966 when I got my master's degree. It's not yet an epitaph; there's more to go.

Mom Linville's Birthday

From Don and Kay in Garden City comes this photo of one of mom Linville's amaryllis plants (more correctly, a descendant thereof) blooming in their sunroom on Monday of this week. As Don noted, just in time for her birthday. Bertha Williams was born on this date 101 years ago in a Western Kansas dugout. A true pioneer, she loved flowers and grew an amazing variety of them despite the challenges of surviving in a a dry, windy, hot, freezing, dusty, unpredictable climate. The amaryllis was only one of the beautiful things that she passed on to her children and their children over the years. And she was the best mother-in-law I could have ever hoped for. Nine years since her passing, we still miss her.

Opening to the Holy

In Central Missouri, there is a retreat center known as Rickman Camp and Conference center, which is owned by the regional Disciples of Christ church. I spent the weekend of March 23-24 there with 21 other women. The rest of the story of the retreat can be found on Home Stories. About 11 a.m. on Saturday, I explored the prayer trail, and found all kinds of small details and wonders to photograph as I walked. I was practicing being in the present moment, trying to be open to what my heart or soul might have learned during the retreat. Our leader, an artist, talked about coming back to her art after many years, finding it a gift she could use for ministry.

Over the years I have explored many gifts, including writing, quilting, photography, and others. But one sensibility I've had since I was very young is an appreciation for the natural world and a desire to experience its myriad changes and moods.
I've collected rocks since I was in grade school (but I left this one in place after taking its picture.). I've identified trees and flowers and birds and tracked the stars.

The night before I took this walk, I had gone outside for half an hour to just sit on a bench in the darkness. Something the leader had shared with us had reminded me of accounts I had read of the old Cherokees and other Native Americans who said they needed physical contact with the ground in order to connect with the Great Spirit. I took off my shoes and socks and let the coolness of the ground seep up through my feet.

As I sat absorbing the silence, I began to hear the peeping of little frogs that come out as a first sign of spring. The next day when I shared that, people seemed surprised that anyone would know what had made the sound. I'm wondering if this is a gift I can use again at this stage of my life. What does it mean that I see the delicate web of a spider in the woods by the prayer trail, or a lichen-covered stump?

A hillside near an outdoor chapel on the Center's grounds is covered with huge, ancient cedar (actually, juniper) trees. They were about to bloom and release a ton of pollen into the air, much to the dismay of anyone with allergies. Even the tiniest thing in Nature can have a profound effect on humans. After I came in from sitting in the night, my feet in contact with the ground, my ears open to the silence, I wrote this:

All the world is quiet except for the buzzing of a street light, the click of a cardoor and someone rolling a suitcase up the walk. And a far off roar of traffic on the highway. And the FROGS! So faint...spring peepers, that falsetto soprano chorus... first night sounds of Spring.

I have to be grounded--I could never live in a high rise, or even on a second floor with a lovely deck. I need the ground to walk on. If only I could be limber enough again to sit down on it, kneel on it, lie on it, and feel the energy of the Earth flow into me, rekindle my spirit. BUT I'm not yet ready to be IN the ground--because I also need to see the sky.