Wounds, Scars, and a Broken Heart

Last night I had a dream in which someone gently touched the scars on my body and asked me why they were there. I replied, "Life gave them to me."

Most people who reach the age of seventy will carry a few visible scars as well as many not seen by the naked eye. Today I reflect on the visible scars and how they might be representative of the emotional scars I carry. They are evidence of both the pain and also the joy I have experienced in my life.

I received my first physical wound before I was a year old, but I have no recollection of the event that left a big raised scar. My mother told me the story.
I was four months old when our family fled Ukraine in October 1943. Our train took us to Poland and from there we made our way into Germany. To keep the infants safe from communicable diseases, the directors at our first camp had a rule that all children under a year must be housed in a separate building, where they were looked after by women hired for that purpose. Each baby was also allotted a supply of nourishing formula. The mothers were allowed to care for their babies during the day but at night they had to leave the building. None of the mothers liked this arrangement. They were accustomed to hold their babies close and nurse them on demand.

My mother and I are in the second row, fourth from the right.

One day as my mother came to see me, a caregiver had placed me under a heating lamp because I had a sore on my left buttock. (The diapers were probably not being changed often enough.) She asked my mother to take over while she went to attend to another chore. Unfortunately, the lamp was too close to my skin, and before my mother realized it I received a big burn. She felt terrible about this and blamed herself more than she did the caregiver who should not have left someone inexperienced in charge.

This scar is my battle scar, a reminder that pain is often beyond my control. I had no choice in the decision to be separated from my mother before I should have been. The emotional scars from that time are not visible but I have a physical scar to prove it. 

I have some scars on my abdomen. They are the result of three C-sections. These scars remind me that joy can be a companion to pain. When I see them, I remember how badly I wanted to have a baby after losing our first child and that I considered the physical pain and discomfort of the surgery worth the joy of having another child.

A third scar is midway between wrist and elbow of my right arm. It is a reminder that pain is sacrificial and worth enduring quietly for friendship's sake. Friends from Ontario had dropped in for a visit with their three boys and I was somewhat in a hurry. I burned myself while reaching into the stove to rescue some grilled cheese sandwiches that were in danger of sliding off the pan. It was a painful burn but I ran cold water over it and didn't mention it to anyone.

I'm in the process of reading a two-volume biographical novel by Hedy Leonora Martens: Favoured Among Women and To and From Nowhere, the true story of Greta Enns. Greta, a Mennonite living during the turbulent times of Stalin's Russia (1941-1976), carried many more scars than I was called to bear, both physical and emotional. She first lost her beloved husband Heinrich, who was imprisoned and never heard from again. Then she and her children were sent north to Kazakhstan, in the middle of winter, where they laboured under the most harrowing of circumstances.

Greta's courage leaves me reeling, especially when I think how close our own family came to experiencing a similar fate. I can only be thankful.

I am grateful to Martens for the meticulous research she did in bringing the plight of these women to our attention. My father's siblings had comparable experiences when they were sent back to Russia after WWII. We did not get the details of those stories, although some of my cousins, now resettled in Germany, have told us bits and pieces. 

The visible scars on our bodies are just a small indication of the emotional wounds we carry from the traumas life brings us. They remind me of Richard Rohr's words:

Your heart needs to be broken and broken open at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.

Planting in January

One of my favourite Christmas presents is a perpetual calendar in a little cardboard box that contains a card for every day of the month with just one word on it. I love this because it gives me some direction and focus. For example, the word "praise" kept me from being critical and actually changed the way the day went for both me and my husband. 

The word for today is "plant." What? This is January in Manitoba and the deep frost has hit us. Plant what? Out there?

I think about it ...  I guess I wouldn't have to take it so literally. I could plant my feet in the snow and go for a nice brisk walk. Or it could be an indication for me to plant an idea and watch it sprout and grow. 

I'm reminded of Jesus' parable in the Gospels in which a sower sowed seed by the wayside, on rocky ground, and among thorns, and the seed was lost. But when the seed fell on good earth it grew -- yielding thirty-, sixty-, and a hundredfold. Jesus told them about the mustard seed which is the smallest of all seeds and yet grows to become the greatest of all shrubs. Jesus took an illustration from the daily life of the people to whom he spoke and gave it a deeper meaning. The stories he told were simple stories yet had profound meaning about change and growth. He was a master storyteller.

An excellent tool to help people on their way to spiritual and mental growth is the Enneagram. I first learned about the Enneagram in 2008, when we moved to Manitoba from Ontario. The main idea of the Enneagram is that we develop an illusionary self in the first half of our lives. The Enneagram helps us to unmask this illusionary self so that we can become our true selves. Lately, I have been thinking and reading about the Enneagram again. Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert first published The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective in 1989 (in German: Das Enneagram: Die 9 Gesichter der Seele). The English translation of the revised and expanded German edition was published in 2001. This is an excellent resource, if you are interested.

My sisters and I receive daily Enneagram messages electronically. They remind us of changes we need to make so that we can discover who we truly are. In order to be more transparent and accountable, we share our messages with each other. This is a growing experience for each of us.

"We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit, we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder precisely because it is so ordinary."  [Richard Rohr]

Peace on Earth

Our humanity is what we have in common but our cultural heritage is a gift each of us is given at birth. And unless we embrace that gift and value the power it is meant to bring to our lives, we cannot realize our full potential.  (Mary-Ann Kirkby)

As I began decorating the tree this Christmas, I wondered where the magic of that childhood joy I used to feel had gone. A German Christmas carol we always sang at this time of year when I was growing up took hold of me and wouldn't let go. I started humming the tune and got stuck on the words. On impulse, I googled it and up came a beautiful rendition of Alle Jahre wieder, taking me right back to those wonderful days. Not only that carol, but many others, one after another, appeared automatically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOuRLRszIcc

I realized what a great gift my mother had given us by singing these songs with us, and I got my Christmas magic back again as I listened to the carols one after another, singing along in joyous abandon!  I remembered how we used to gather around a table on which my mother had placed a small Advent house with a candle inside. The light of the candle shone through the parchment paper windows of the little house. The house had 24 windows and one door. These represented the days before Christmas and the day we opened the door, it was Christmas. Each window had a Scripture verse printed on it and if we memorized it we received some kind of Christmas treat (candy, cookie, or an orange). Treats were few and far between in those days; we were refugees and had just arrived from a war-torn country to finally join our relatives in Canada (October 1952).

I still have that authentic Advent house. It is well used. The inside is blackened with smoke from many candles and some of the shutters of the windows are missing. The sides are taped together. On a trip to Europe a few years ago, I saw one just like it in a museum in Husum (northern Germany). They told me there were none available for purchase.

Although I have many positive memories of my first Christmas in Canada, I do recall one rather painful experience. We had dutifully memorized some Christmas recitations (in German) like we did every year, but when we recited them at the local Mennonite church Christmas program no one clapped. We were met with a wall of silence. We didn't know it at the time, but the church had recently decided not to use German in their worship services. It was the language associated with the war and identified us as the enemy. For years I suffered from stage fright because of this incident.

In Canada, many refugees will be experiencing Christmas for the first time this year and next. I wonder how we can make this a time of joyful remembrance for them in spite of all the sadness they have gone through. We hope they will soon adapt and enjoy the freedom their new home country offers. Acculturation will happen gradually but that time of adaptation will be very crucial to their well-being. In the meantime we want to affirm, accept, and embrace together with them their family traditions and their way of life. 

I have been reading a fascinating book about a refugee who defected to America in 1967. Her name is Svetlana Alliluyeva. She is Stalin's daughter. Here is an excerpt from the book jacket:

Born in 1926, Svetlana Alliluyeva spent her youth inside the Kremlin as her father's power soared. Eighty-five years later, she died alone and penniless in rural Wisconsin. Revealed here for the first time, the many lives of Josef Stalin's daughter form a riveting portrait of a woman who fled halfway around the world to escape her birthright.

In the Kremlin Svetlana had lived a privileged existence, compared to that of the starving masses (including our family) created by her father's ruthless regime. Her life was much like that of the average American--a comfortable home, good schooling, summer cottage vacations, etc. However, Svetlana was not immune to tragedy. She lost her mother to suicide, and her father's merciless purges claimed relatives as well as her lover who was exiled to Siberia. When she defected, she left her two young adult children behind.

Svetlana searched all her life for the kind of world described by the prophet Isaiah in the passage below, a time when the whole world will be at peace:

                               The wolf will live with the lamb,

                               the leopard will lie down with the young goat;

                               the calf and the lion will eat from the same trough
                               and a little child will lead them.

                               The cow and the bear will graze in the same pasture;

                               their young will lie down in peace

                               and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

                               Even a baby will not be harmed if it plays near a poisonous snake.

                               Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill on Zion, God's holy mountain.

                               The whole earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
                               as the waters cover the sea.

                                                                                                           (Isaiah 11.6-9, alt.)

My challenge for 2016 is to work at keeping Isaiah's vision alive!

Kairos Time

It was nearing the end of October and I was getting the winter blahs. Because the fall season seemed to last longer this year than other years, it was even more difficult to accept the fact that we would soon be enveloped in snow and ice. Those of you who have experienced winters in Manitoba know what I mean!

To top it all off, my husband Hardy had just been diagnosed with a mysterious illness called cold agglutinin disease. This is an autoimmune reaction to cold temperatures in which the blood's antibodies begin to destroy red blood cells, causing anemia. Although
we lived in the tropics many years, Hardy loves to go outside in winter and actually enjoys shoveling snow. The doctor's advice: go south for the winter and absolutely no snow shoveling!

That created a spark of joy in me, but it didn't last long. Hardy was reluctant to accept
this advice; he couldn't entertain the idea of someone else doing the snow shoveling.
How could we afford to go south every winter and  pay someone to shovel our snow?!
I concluded glumly that I would end up doing the snow shoveling and Hardy would stay indoors, something neither of us would enjoy very much.

Reflecting on the implications of all of this at breakfast that morning, I glanced out the window of our kitchen and from the corner of my eye I saw something bright blue against our drab grey fence. It was a surprise I had not anticipated.
(Several years ago I had purchased a small plant called monkshood and placed it against the fence in our back yard. It grew tall and spindly but never bloomed. I wondered if perhaps I had planted it in the wrong spot. Maybe it needed sun all day long instead of just in the morning.)

Now, after all this time, at the end of October, it was blooming! I couldn't believe my eyes and ran outside to verify what I thought I had seen. Not only was the monkshood in bloom, it also had buds on some of its other branches. How could a plant begin blossoming this late in the season? I thought this was unheard of, so I googled it. I learned that monkshood usually blooms in September. Since this plant had never yet flowered, and since it did so now in late fall, I considered it to be a small miracle sent to cheer me up at a time when I needed it!

On the top right of the photo you can see the yellow leaves of our maple tree, 

proving that this is indeed late autumn.

On the lower left you can see a few more flowers and the lower right shows some buds forming.

A blogger friend, with whom I shared this experience, called it a happening in "kairos time" instead of in "chronos time." (The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens.)

We are now into November and all the flowers have gone, except the monkshood. It is a reminder to me that even at the bleakest moments in my life there is hope, if only I allow myself to see it and grasp it.

PS:  I almost forgot to mention that I also learned that monkshood is a very poisonous plant ... !

Kindness is Kindness in Any Language

Recently, while attending a reading at the McNally Robinson Booksellers, I had a chance encounter with someone whose parents we remember well from our time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). He told me that his father had written a memoir. I was not aware of this and asked if there were still any copies available. The following week I found the book in my church mailbox. Eagerly I began to read In Search of Identity: The Life and Times of Peter J. Kroeker. A large section of the book describes the family's work in Africa. Since their time overlapped with ours, I found this part of Peter's memoir especially intriguing. What I remember most about Peter and Ruth is their kindness and gentleness, particularly toward the Congolese, and how perturbed they were when they saw other expatriates treating the nationals in a demeaning manner.

Peter and Ruth Kroeker and their younger children (1971)

One example of their kindness is described in the book. The home in which the Kroeker family lived during their time in Congo was situated next to a warehouse which was guarded by a Congolese watchman day and night. He had his own little hut on the premises. Every night Ruth would bring him a plate of food and he was very grateful. One day Ruth went to the market to buy bananas. Just as she was about to pay for them, someone behind her handed her some coins. It was the night watchman. Another time he brought a fresh pineapple to their home. Ruth did not refuse these gifts as she realized the value of reciprocal giving. The night watchman and Ruth did not know each other's language; their common language was kindness. As her son Mark writes in the memoir, "Kindness is kindness in any language."

This story reminded me of an experience I had in our first years in Congo. We lived on the second floor of a two-storey apartment building on the main street of the provincial town of Kikwit. Below us was the mission bookstore and the Bible translation office where my husband worked with his team of translators. The children and I spent a lot of time on our balcony, where we had a good view of the busy life below. Every morning we saw a young boy heading toward the translation office. He had only one leg and used a stick to propel himself along. At the office my husband would give him a coin and he would head off toward the bakery to buy himself a baguette; it was his one sure meal of the day.

One day I was busy with the baby when I noticed my two-year-old daughter was missing. I looked everywhere in the apartment and couldn't find her. Could she have slipped out the door and down the stairs unnoticed? She would have to maneuver quite a few steps. Glancing down from the balcony, I couldn't believe my eyes. There on the sidewalk, in front of my husband's office, sat the young boy with the baguette. Beside him was our little girl and in her pudgy hands she held half of the baguette. Both were munching away, eating their breakfast and enjoying each other's company. That young boy taught me something about generosity. We gave from our plenty; he gave from the little he had, probably his only meal of the day!

We don't always realize how far-reaching a small act of kindness can be. This became evident to us just recently. We received an e-mail from a person we had not heard from for over twenty years. Kanga was a Congolese teenager who liked to hang out at our house. He came almost every day for several years. He was eager to help with chores such as gardening, building a tree house for the girls, running errands, etc. We assisted him in small ways with food, a daily shower, and other needs he might have.

In his e-mail, Kanga thanked us profusely for what we had done for him. He told us that, because he had spent so much time with us, he had had the opportunity to learn English. (I never heard him speak a word of English, neither did he ever request an English lesson from me!) Following our return to Canada, he applied to work at the American School of Kinshasa (TASOK) and was accepted because of his English skills. He went on to get a teaching degree and was hired by expatriates from India and Pakistan. He credited us for his success in life. We had no idea!

Looking back at my own life, I recognize simple acts of kindness that made a big difference to my well-being. As new immigrants to Canada, my parents worked hard to feed and clothe their eight children. My father worked nights at a dairy and we had no vehicle. Winters were very cold and we had a half-hour walk to school.

Our neighbours offered us a ride to school. Whenever the temperatures dipped below zero, four of us went to their house and stood in the hallway waiting until they had finished their breakfast; then we crowded into their car, almost on top of each other. Their kitchen, with its combination of cigarette smoke and pancakes and bacon, smelled nothing like our house!  [I didn't know moms were allowed to smoke, and at our house we always had porridge for breakfast. Pancakes were for lunch or supper and, on the rare occasion that we had meat other than liver, it would have been for Sunday dinner!]

Another family, who did not even live in town, offered us a ride to church every Sunday and sometimes my sister and I were invited to their house on the farm after church. We got a ride back with them in time for evening services. We felt so privileged to be part of their lives. Their farm house was probably quite ordinary but to us it seemed rich and beautiful. Their daughter had a bedroom all to herself and she had so many toys! And for evening snack we had hot chocolate with marshmallows!

The customs and habits of these Canadians were different from ours, but it was their kindness that remains with me. 

The Syrian refugee crisis we hear about in the news these days brings with it so much sadness and heartache. It is easy to become overwhelmed, to throw up our hands and say, "What can we possibly do in the face of such calamitous events?" 

Mother Theresa says it well: "Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."

Costly Loving

My heart is always open and receptive to people who are victims. Through no fault of their own, they have been physically or mentally bullied, abused, degraded. They need my compassion and understanding; I need to walk with them and help them.

My natural reaction toward the perpetrators of pain is disgust. I want to see them punished for what they have done, locked up so they can't hurt anyone again. They should know what pain their actions have caused and they should feel that pain. This is especially true if they have hurt young children or vulnerable teenagers.

Recently the church where I worship has found itself in the unfamiliar and rather uncomfortable position of supporting people who have caused grievous pain to others, in both cases to teenagers and their parents.

One of these people, as pastor of a congregation, was in a position of great trust. He knowingly and willfully abused that trust by taking photos of young women in washrooms. He is waiting for his day in court.

This man asked for permission to attend our worship services. Church council prayerfully pondered the request, informed the church membership and asked for time to consider. After six months of deliberation, council again brought the request to the membership and we agreed (by vote) to allow him to worship with us. Parameters were put in place ensuring that he would never be alone while in the church building and that he would not ever have contact with young children in our congregation unless he was accompanied by someone.

Not everyone was comfortable with this decision and some who had been church members for years walked away. They could not be in the same building with a man who so blatantly misused the trust of others. They were concerned about the safety of children and young people, a very legitimate concern.

The second person is a truck driver and the partner of a woman who recently joined the church. For just a few minutes, while driving his truck, he drifted off. He entered a construction zone without slowing down. Three teenage boys were killed instantly and a construction worker was seriously injured. The truck driver suffered minor injuries. He has been charged with criminal negligence for causing the death of three people and injuring another.

Very seldom do I ask myself how the people who cause pain to others might be feeling. What they have done eclipses the fact that they too are hurting. My natural reaction is to judge them rather than to put myself into their shoes. I can't even imagine that I would ever do such a thing. I can understand and empathize with the truck driver to some degree because the pain he caused others was due to negligence, not to willful planning. But I find myself judging him too. He seemed to have an answer for every situation. I'm hoping this experience will humble him. I ask myself how I would feel if I was a parent of one of the teenagers who was killed. Would I even know how to address this pain positively or would it break me?

The pastor who misused the trust of his congregation just makes me angry. I had a high regard for him before I knew what he had done. I wonder how I could have been so gullible. I ask myself what else he would have done had he not been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and what else he has done that we know nothing about. Now that he is part of my church community, I am forced to interact with him; if I try to avoid him, he is still in my thoughts and prayers.

I realize that people who hurt others willfully (like the pastor) have not learned to deal with their own needs adequately. But having this abusive person in our midst is causing me pain. How can I handle this situation constructively? Can I do it by giving in to my fears, walking away and thus rejecting him? That seems negative to me. Can I force myself to welcome him, to embrace his presence? I am thinking that will be healing for both of us, but it is a difficult journey; I can't do it on my own.

                               Let our strength be in forgiving as forgiven we must be,
                               One to one in costly loving, finding trust and growing free,
                               Gentle God, be our release, gentle Spirit, teach us peace.

                                                       Shirley E. Murray

Two Little Words

Today is filled with hustle-bustle, and tomorrow is a mystery, but our yesterdays are treasures from the past to be cherished and enjoyed again and again.

                                                                                          Barbara Johnson

A long time ago I found new words for something I loved to do. I was nine years old and a newcomer to Canada. My family left Paraguay in October of 1952 and we older siblings began going to school almost as soon as we arrived. We attended a country school near Didsbury, Alberta, located within walking distance of the farm house we rented that first year. My mother's cousin was our teacher and she spoke our mother tongue (Plautdietsch = Low German), so it should have been a gentle easing into the culture and language. I just remember being very confused by it all. I had finished Grade Two (in German) and was an excellent reader, but when my teacher asked me to recite the alphabet in German I couldn't do it. She decided to put me into Grade Two.

Although I didn't say much, I observed and listened. At recess I heard the children saying two words over and over again. I really wanted to know what these words meant but I couldn't figure it out. The two words were "let's pretend."

I thought my younger sister and I (we are 22 months apart) were in this together, but as I stood there, concentrating on these strange words, I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. It was my sister, running home as fast as her legs could carry her. She had disappeared into the ditch at the side of the schoolyard and all I could see was the top of her head. She had enough of "let's pretend," she was done with it all!

I decided not to go after her. When I got home from school, she was still hiding under the bed. I don't remember what I did to coax her out but eventually she emerged and the next day we trudged off again, braving the cold wind and the strange new world in which we found ourselves.

It wasn't long until I learned many new words that enriched my life and "let's pretend" became part of my vocabulary as well. My cousin, my sister and I spent many hours pretending we were grown up and building our own home as we happily wallpapered chicken coops with homemade paste and left-over wallpaper our aunt gave us; or played on the large front porch pretending it was a huge ship and we were sailing the ocean. We never ran out of ideas, and at our cousin's place we could play all day long without being bothered by younger siblings or chores our mother had waiting for us.

I also distinctly recall the day when the words "let's pretend" no longer held any joy for me. I wanted to play with my sister who was having a tea party with our dolls but it wasn't fun any longer. Making paper dolls from the Eaton's catalogue wasn't appealing any more either. For me it was not a gradual easing into adulthood but rather a painful departure from the world of imagination to the world of reality. The imaginary world attracted me more but I could no longer lose myself in it.

I solved the problem by delving into the world of books. Here I could vicariously enjoy what other people imagined and put into words. It was the grown-up game of "let's pretend." My cousin and my sister were two years younger than I and they couldn't understand my sudden retreat. I had become more quiet and introspective. I began to write poetry and novels. My inner life became a safe haven in the more threatening outside world.

My mother made sure I didn't lose myself completely. I was the oldest daughter of eight children, and she needed my help in the house. Reluctantly I dragged my feet into her mundane world of dishes and diapers, always more than happy to leave it again.

The happiest place, of course, was that childhood world of the imagination, when we could be anything we wanted to be or do anything we wanted to do. Sometimes I can almost return to it now, through a smell or a sound that was part of my world then. The pungent aroma of the stem of a fresh tomato plucked from the garden reminds me of Tante Sarah  and her "Boklezhane" (which is one of my favorite words and means tomatoes in Russian -- I always thought it was a Low German word!). Dunking a Zwieback in a cup of coffee can take me back there as well. We used roasted Kefir grains with plenty of milk as a substitute for coffee in Paraguay. We soaked chunks of bread in our "coffee," and when all the liquid was absorbed by the bread we turned it upside down on our saucer. With the addition of cinnamon and sugar it became a cake of sorts. "Arbus" (the Russian word for watermelon) also sends me down memory's path. I can see my mother, holding a baby, both of them eating watermelon, the red juice dripping down the baby's fat tummy.

Simple things made us happy in those days.

  

Backward, turn backward,

O time, in  your flight,

Make me a child again

just for tonight!
                                                                                 Elizabeth Akers Allen