AN OLD BLUE SHIRT

Some people develop a fondness for shoes and wear them past everlastingness; others become attached to coats, dresses, and various pieces of clothing that end up in five percent of the material in landfills. I confess to a fondness for old blouses, sweaters, and shirts that can be worn with blue jeans and lounging pants, and my favorite among the latter is an old blue Liz Claiborne shirt that was designed for jeans wear. I am not only inured to the shirt, I can’t wear it without thinking of the tumultuous time in which I acquired it. Unfortunately, the shirt has reached the frayed, underarm-holes condition that has made it suitable only for bedtime wear. Its demise is near…

In late August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and at that time I was director of Solomon House, an outreach mission in New Iberia, Louisiana. Many who could not be housed in the Super Dome in New Orleans fled to New Iberia for temporary housing, food, water… for their very survival. Two days after the exodus, Solomon House began receiving clothing from everywhere in the United States – truckloads of used and new clothing from the Eastern coast, the West coast, Midwest, and from all southern states. We stacked, sorted, and distributed clothing, food, diapers, and medical supplies in the six rooms and a back porch of Solomon House, a gray frame house built in the early part of the 20^th century that we used for outreach work. Our hurricane recovery work lasted for at least four months following the most devastating hurricane to hit Louisiana, and I was on duty from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. during that time.

One day as I sorted through the clothing, this almost-new Liz Claiborne shirt appeared in one of the numerous boxes we were unpacking. It was made of soft blue cotton, and I coveted it at first sight, but I consigned it to a table of shirts and offered it to every woman who came in looking for shirts or blouses. “Too hot for that shirt,” most of them said. “Not dressy enough for my liking,” several said, and none of them seemed to like the soft blue color. The shirt lay on the table for at least two months before I decided that it belonged to me. After all, I had been working 12-hour days, no one wanted the shirt, and it had the look of “wanting attachment” to me. I took it home and tried it on. Too large, but comfortable, I surmised. After I took the article home and began wearing it, I thought many times about joining the people who began to model the clothing they had found on our tables, but felt a twinge of guilt that I had taken it home, rather than trusting that someone would finally make it their own. So I wore it in the privacy of my home. Instead, I wrote a poem about someone else modeling their Solomon House clothing entitled “Rising Water,” which appeared in my book of poetry by that same name, and a few verses of which appear below:

“…the awful body of the humiliated

on our doorstep, to whom we said

and he will transform

the body of your humiliation,

those victims of inundation

driven not by realism

but by visions of a redeemed future,

the miracle of faith in a God

who would help them survive.

We clothed a young evacuee from New Orleans

and he returned in his used outfit,

parachute pants, a striped polo shirt,

mimed a fashion model for us,

called his outfit

“The New Solomon House Line,”

sashayed through the outreach center

consoling us with his humor,

in the midst of agony showed us

he could see God…”

The young man was a bright light in the flooded world, and perhaps I’ve persisted in wearing the worn shirt just to remind me of the resilience of humans and the place of humor in redeeming an impossible situation. However, eleven years later I am giving up my blue shirt. According to an article in the September/October, 2005 issue of Green American, I don’t have to consign this favored piece of clothing to the dump, my old friend “too worn to wear” can be salvaged for such projects as “ugly quilts,” bedding for animal cages, textile recycling centers, or just for rags to use as a substitute for paper towels.

I will miss the comfortable shirt, but it’s better that I give it up for use in another home. However, I’m already looking for a replacement — an article of clothing that will carry the spirit of resilience and humor of the first one delivered to me, albeit illegally, on the heels of a vicious hurricane.

A BOX OF HUMILITY

I’ve often refused to give out copies of sermons that people request when one I’ve preached pleases their ear, mostly because I think that a sermon is more effective audibly delivered, but sometimes people hear a story and ask for a hard copy of it. Ash Wednesday I talked about pride and its effects and how Lent was a meet time to do a little self-examination, pray for, and practice humility, and several people expressed interest in a printed version of a story within the sermon. Here’s the story:

“Almost twenty years ago, I was director of Solomon House, an outreach mission at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in New Iberia, Louisiana, and a woman came to me on a day we didn’t usually give out money for emergency assistance. She had visited us often, many times going into the sheds behind Solomon House that held clothing for rummage sales…to get clothes for her sick husband she always said. The woman made the request so many times and carted away such quantities of clothing that I thought her husband was either the best-dressed man in a small community down the road from New Iberia, or she was collecting clothes for her own backyard sales. In my arrogance, I presumed to know what her real needs were.

The morning she came to me, I began, rather impatiently, to explain why I couldn’t help her. When I finally shut up, having used up all the reasons, justifications, and explanations I could summon to mind for not helping her, she just looked at me and asked if she could come into my office. I said “yes,” but I was suspicious.

The woman held a small cardboard box with a lid on it that she brought into the office with her. “I don’t want money or clothing,” she said. “I just want you to help me with some closure about my husband. These are his ashes.” She pointed to the box she had plunked down on my desk. “And you’re a good person, so please bless them.” She began to lift the lid, but I motioned for her to leave it on.

As minister of an outreach mission, I had to be prepared for most anything, but this request was a first. I can’t tell you how small I felt. Most Episcopalians say that when all else fails, consult the Book of Common Prayer, so I picked up the BCP lying on my desk, flipped the pages until I found the Committal in the burial service and read it aloud, then embraced the woman, who was, by now, crying softly.

As I ushered her out, a friend who had accompanied her said: “She has been riding around since daybreak waiting for you to open Solomon House to do that blessing.” The women got into a car and sped off, sans clothing, sans emergency assistance, leaving me with my presumptuousness and my former judgments about who the woman with the ashes really was. And she, of course, had been the face of Christ.

Most of us have met at least one person who holds up a mirror for us to see the real Self. Thank God. This Ash Wednesday we confront with humility the fact that we don’t possess super-powered lenses to see into the soul of others, and we’re forced to let go of our presumptuousness, to allow faith and trust to take over.”

That’s not the complete sermon, but it’s a starter for going into the desert of Lent, to enter this time of self-emptying. As the Scot preacher George MacDonald once said: the love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of Self — nothing else added, nothing else needed.

LABYRINTHING

Labyrinth at Convent of St. Mary, Sewanee

Sunday afternoon, Vickie Sullivan and I returned to the Convent of St. Mary, where we worship regularly, to walk in St. Mary's Prayer Garden and to view the lavender fields that students, interns, and workers from Thistle Farms in Nashville, had planted and harvested several times. Behind the lavender fields, we walked a gravel path, lined with iris, to the labyrinth that Nathan Bourne, an intern at the Convent in 2012, had helped construct. Native stone edges the path of the circles that were formed with boxwood plants, and a beech tree in the center of the labyrinth shelters it. This space, only a few years old, carries the spirit of ancient Benedictine spirituality implicit in St. Mary's mission, and we savored the peace associated with prayer paths. After walking the labyrinth at St. Mary's, visitors can sit awhile on a stone bench inscribed with the comforting words of Julian of Norwich: "All Shall Be Well." It was a great place to spend time on a Sunday afternoon.

Bench beside CSM
labyrinth

The visit to this labyrinth reminded me of another labyrinth built in the backyard of Solomon House, the outreach mission in New Iberia, Louisiana for which I was once executive director. Vickie Sullivan, then treasurer of the Solomon House Board, and Betty Leblanc, former president of the Board, constructed this labyrinth initially as a temporary path for a Board retreat. On a hot summer day, the two women, armed with a stick, some string, and marking powder began work on the labyrinth. After clearing the yard, they anchored the stick in the center and used the string to mark off circles. One of the pair walked with the taut string while the other followed behind, pouring powder on the grass and marking seven rings, equidistant apart. They decorated the entrance with potted plants and prepared a place to set up a recording of music from Pachelbel.

Construction of Solomon House
Labyrinth

Board members who walked the prayer path the day of the retreat reported that their experience was so profound they wanted the labyrinth to become permanent so that the entire community of New Iberia could use it for prayer and contemplation. The design was actually an ancient one, using the bare earth as a base and river rock to delineate the pathways. Betty's husband, Wilson, brought in extra dirt to fill in the lower spots, obtained a donation of 1500 pounds of cement to mix with the soil, spread the cement, and laser leveled the base. A small box containing information about walking a labyrinth was attached to a tree in the backyard.

Construction of Solomon House
Labyrinth

Coincidentally, the day the river rocks for constructing the labyrinth arrived, Hurricane Katrina blew in. Solomon House set up a food and clothing station to help with displaced people coming in from New Orleans. Many came to the outreach house to be consoled after they had lost everything but the clothing on their backs, including two young men who had been stranded on the overpass in New Orleans for days. They helped move the rocks into place in the heat and humidity that usually follows a hurricane, and a sacred place was born. The labyrinth became permanent and continues to host Earth Day celebrations, board retreats, women's groups, and individual retreats.

Construction of Solomon House
Labyrinth

Labyrinths have been used for meditation and prayer since 3000 B.C. and can be found throughout the world. Chartres Cathedral in France contains one of the most famous pavement labyrinths dating back to medieval times when labyrinths were at their zenith.