Tennis, touch football, swimming, sailing, horse-back riding . . . if it involved action, the Kennedy clan, including our 35th President, were at it! Though President Kennedy suffered from severe back pain, he was often photographed participating in sports.
Through Kennedy’s Council on Physical Fitness, Americans in the 1960s were challenged to become more active and physically fit. In these days of remembrance of President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, this post pays tribute to that part of his legacy, a call to shape up!
Decades later, I’m still at it, trying to avoid canes, walkers, and wheelchairs in the near future. And so, fitness classes at the gym have become a metaphor for my life in general: Pilates / PowerPump = hard / harder.
Lift it up!
Step it up!
Roll it up!
Quiet zone, low light, deep breaths, ready for Pilates . . . ah!
My mother and I are waiting in Doctor Garber’s examining room, which always has a sharp smell of rubbing alcohol. She’s the patient, and I’m with her sitting on a chair eyeing the metal tray holding at least a dozen tiny vials, so cute they look like they could fit in the kitchen of my doll-house. But they are vials of venom, possible culprits. Nurse Becky Longenecker carefully fills little syringes with each fluid, which puncture the skin of Mommy’s extended arm trying to determine whether it is house dust, hay, mildew, turpentine, or cat dander that is causing her frightful asthma attacks. I watch as some injections leave a puffy patch or a bright red spot. She leaves the office with a paper packet of pills to try. Maybe these will help.
But I guess they aren’t working either. Once again, Mother is propped up on feather pillows gasping for breath, her face blanched white with the effort. It’s scary for Daddy and my sisters too. We feel helpless. But Daddy knows about Ordinance # 7 in the Statement of Christian Doctrine of the Lancaster Conference of the Mennonite Church: “Anointing. According to James 5:10-18 we encourage our members to call for anointing with oil accompanied by the prayer of faith for healing.”
Olive Oil in a Vial of Healing
So my dad has called for Pastor Martin R. Kraybill and Deacon John R. Kraybill, brothers, to come to Mom and Dad’s bedroom upstairs for the anointing of oil as prescribed in the New Testament passage of James 5:14 & 15.
Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church: and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
As Pastor Martin prays and reads the scripture to Mother and to the family assembled around her bed, Deacon John anoints her forehead with olive oil, an outward symbol of the healing that is transpiring within. Mom later describes a tingling sensation like a warm, electrical current radiating from the top of her spine to the bottom. “It felt wonderful!” she says. She has been healed immediately—and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
No more doctor visits for asthma ever again, the vials of venom to test for triggers, a thing of the past. Praise God!
Have you or someone you know had an experience similar to this? We’d love to hear your story.
We have a winner! The winner of Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels is . . .
Gwen Witmer
Congratulations, Gwen – happy reading!
The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914) Courtesy Wikipedia
PRAYER
A holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada, Thanksgiving invites us to pause and give thanks as we pray, that mysterious communication between one’s heart and the mind of God. Writer C. S. Lewis declares his attitude before prayer: “The prayer preceding all prayers is “May it be the real I who speaks.” British author W. H. Auden expresses the mystery of prayer in a haiku: “He has never seen God, / but once or twice, he believes / he has heard Him,” quoted in The New Yorker, November 14, 2011. And the British author John Baillie implores of God as he prays:
Let me use disappointment as material for patience.
Let me use success as material for thankfulness.
Let me use trouble as material for perseverance.
Let me use danger as material for courage.
Let me use reproach as material for long-suffering.
Let me use praise as material for humility.
Let me use pleasures as material for temperance.
Let me use pain as material for endurance.
Children in our church’s 2-year-old class learn that prayer is talking to God, and then they do just that when they clasp their fat, little fingers as they sing “God is great, and God is good” before snack time:
“Keeping company with God” is the title of Part One of Philip Yancey’s book with the arresting title Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? He discusses also the language of prayer and the dilemmas of prayer including what one should pray for, the enigma of unanswered prayer, and “un-prayed answers.” (220) Ah, the mystery of talking to God.
PRAISE
Lately I decided to cheer myself up by reviewing the bounty of God’s blessings. When the machinery of life goes awry–the doctor has a dire report, the car breaks down, a friend misunderstands–how can it be that I overlook divine intervention? My memory for blessing is so limited, and so I record evidences of God’s faithfulness:
PETITION
Over the years, in fact since 1984, I have accumulated prayer cards, some printed with typewriter ribbon and later ones two-sided and computer generated. Most of what is on the card are names of family and friends who need help, but sometimes there is a condition humanly unsolvable that I pray God will remedy. The cards are speckled with dates recording what I regard as answers to prayer.
How soon we forget. How necessary to remember!
Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well, expresses with clarity the “quiet mystery” of communication between God and [wo]man in two stanzas of “Primary Wonder” (vimeo):
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes; the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, you still,
hour by hour sustain it.
How do you practice gratitude?
During this Thanksgiving season do you have a story, long treasured in the family or a newly minted one to share? We’re ready to listen!
Facebook asks boldly, “Do you want to post this on your wall?” meaning do you want this information available to your Facebook friends? Obviously, walls in the 1950s were not electronic. The only walls we knew then were made of plaster. But more on that later!
Longenecker Homestead in the family for five generations
The John Longenecker homestead sits just across the road from Bossler Mennonite Church. The scene is bucolic, farms and land extending as far as the eye can see in this quiet niche of western Lancaster County. Poles that once attached electrical wiring to this house are gone, so I assume a plainer family, probably Amish, now lives in the house and farms the acreage.
Apparently the family is not bashful about proclaiming their convictions, broadcasting from their mailbox on both sides two biblical admonitions, one from John 8:11, words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman.
Usually painted scenes and pretty art adorn the walls of modern homes, but “back in the day” wall hangings we called mottoes were intended to exhort and encourage. Above the door leading from my Grandma’s kitchen to the sitting room is this stern commandment:
Upstairs in Grandma’s Victorian-style bedroom is a poem with a much softer touch, embroidered for her mother by my aunt, Ruth Longenecker:
My Mother’s Garden, an embroidered poem by author Alice E. Allen
In our own home was this fixture from Proverbs 3:6 in the little walkway between our living and dining rooms. There it was from childhood to adulthood imprinting our minds and hearts until it eventually became invisible to us.
The wall hanging that made the biggest impression on me was Rudyard Kipling’s “If, for Men” adapted into an the idealized version for women or girls. I never tried to memorize the whole poem, but the words “If you can hear the whispering about you . . . ” keep chiming in my mind even now:
IF – for Girls
If you can hear the whispering about you
And never yield to deal in whispers, too;
If you can bravely smile when loved ones doubt you
And never doubt, in turn, what loved ones do;
If you can keep a sweet and gentle spirit
In spite of fame or fortune, rank or place,
And though you win your goal or only near it,
Can win with poise or lose with equal grace;
If you can meet with Unbelief, believing,
And hallow in your heart, a simple creed,
If you can meet Deception, undeceiving,
And learn to look to God for all you need;
If you can be what girls should be to mothers:
Chums in joy and comrades in distress,
And be unto others as you’d have the others
Be unto you – – no more, and yet no less;
If you can keep within your heart the power
To say that firm, unconquerable “No,”
If you can brave a present shadowed hour
Rather than yield to build a future woe;
If you can love, yet not let loving master,
But keep yourself within your own self’s clasp,
And not let Dreaming lead you to disaster
Nor Pity’s fascination loose your grasp;
If you can lock your heart on confidences
Nor ever needlessly in turn confide;
If you can put behind you all pretenses
Of mock humility or foolish pride;
If you can keep the simple, homely virtue
Of walking right with God – – then have no fear
That anything in all the world can hurt you – –
And – – which is more – – you’ll be a Woman, dear.
by Elizabeth Lincoln Otis
We want to know. What was/is hanging on the walls of your home, past or present?
By the way, it’s not too late to enter the book giveaway contest for a chance to win a copy of Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s book The Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels.
Click HERE to post a comment and a chance to win. The contest closes on Saturday, November 9, 2013 at noon. Only comments logged into this website can be honored. The winner will be announced here on this blog and in an email.
“Going Home, going home, I’m just going home . . . .” William Arms Fisher wrote a spiritual tune with nostalgic lyrics adapted from the famous largo in Dvorak’s 9th Symphony that hints of going home “through an open door.”
Last Saturday I walked through the open door back home to my college reunion during Homecoming weekend at Eastern Mennonite University. Nestled among the purple mountains of Virginia in the lush Shenandoah Valley, EMU‘s banner proclaims itself “A Chritian University Like No Other.”
EMU was just a college when I attended. Now the campus seems twice as large and current students way younger than I remember. I kept having to adjust to the sensation of flipping between decades as I viewed the campus and my classmates in a time warp.
There were other adjustments too. College girls now were sporting blue jeans and serious jewelry; my female classmates, like me, all wore braids or buns with prayer coverings.
Our class gift was the donation of the campus’ first piano. Now there was a magnificent pipe organ in the sanctuary, string ensembles playing folksy tunes, and (gasp!) a theatre department.
“Scatter seeds of loving deeds . . . till we are gathered home at last.” Walking Roots Band
Old Friends
My college room-mate Verna Mohler Colliver and meOther room-mates and friends: Our name tags imprinted with college yearbook photos.Raymond Martin, motorcycle ridin’ class-mate
Yes, we have all changed. The institution has changed too, outwardly at least, but the mission of the university has remained the same: commitment to rigorous academics with an invitation “to follow Christ’s call, to bear witness to faith, serve with compassion, and walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace” in true Anabaptist Mennonite tradition. The motto that was displayed front and center in the sanctuary of the chapel when I was a student still remains: Thy Word is Truth John 17:17.
New Friend
Shirley Hershey Showalter and I have been getting acquainted in the blog world by visiting each other’s websites since March 2013. In September of this year her memoir, Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets and Glittering Worldwas published and she has been on a whirlwind book tour, yet she made time for us to meet and visit over breakfast at her home in Harrisonburg, VA on the edge of the EMU campus.
Her breakfast room and office space overlook the gorgeous Massanutten Mountains. The office space includes what you would expect from a college English professor, turned college president and now author–tons of books and orderly files. However, I discovered that there is a special chair where she weaves the magic: a red upholstered swivel chair facing the mountain view. No wonder her book sings!
magic chair
“I promise: you will be transported,” says Bill Moyers of her memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered little girl with big dreams entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950s and `60s.
Carolyn Stoner, winner of BLUSH book giveaway contest
Carolyn reports that she loves, loves, loves the book and has underlined certain passages and even inserted little pink sticky notes to earmark special pages. (Stickies concealed for photo!) Carolyn’s name was chosen in a drawing by commenting on my review of Shirley new book: Book review and Contest
My mom’s sacred space is her kitchen where she offers the sacrifice of her heart and hands to those in need and indeed her family. On my last trip to Pennsylvania, Mother made chicken corn soup from a recipe in her head. When I ask her how much of this or that, her quick reply is always, “Just how you think.” I don’t know what to think, so I always try to extract some measurements out of her. Her current “guess” for our favorite harvest soup:
Mother Longenecker’s Chicken Corn Soup
Cook 5-6 pieces of chicken, breasts or thighs. Set aside.
In broth from cooked chicken, add 1 ½ – 2 pints of corn, fresh or frozen.
Dice 4 hard-boiled eggs.
Now, add chicken breasts, chopped up
Season with salt & pepper to taste
Mom’s Chicken Corn Soup without Rivels
Rivels: dough-y lumps can be added to soup for more texture
1 beaten egg
Add enough flour to make a moist doughiness of the mixture.
Break into small dumpling-like pieces and add to soup.
* * * * *
About 2 miles east of Mom’s house near Mt. Joy is Gus’s Restaurant. Gus is Italian, but his eatery is in Lancaster County, so aside from spaghetti, fish dishes, and fancy desserts on the menu, he offers ham loaf and pork and sauerkraut dinners with mashed potatoes for hearty Pennsylvania Dutch appetites.
A heavy meal, this dinner will give us enough fuel to make it to the Philadelphia Airport and then home to Jacksonville. Gus’s food is tasty, but Gus’s is a public place without a hoard of cooking aromas and shared memories from Mom’s Kitchen, her sacred space. In fact, it’s not a fair competition at all.
There’s no contest!
What favorite recipes do you savor during the fall season?
What are your memories of special dishes around the table with friends or family?
Coming next: Old Friends, New Friend: Homecoming @ EMU
Vintage skates just before they were tossed into the recycling bin!
All my memories of winter time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are good ones. Cold, soggy socks warmed up and dried out on the heat register in Grandma Longenecker’s kitchen. Frozen lips thawed by hot chocolate with fat little marshmallows bobbing up and down.
Yes, there was snow and there was ice, sometimes both the same weekend. On snowy days and nights when traffic was at a stand-still, two Longenecker Flexible Flyer sleds zipped down the curve of the long hill between our house and Grandma’s. (There were more children than sleds, so we had to take turns.) Alongside the woods, there was another, shorter hill with a steeper grade for a faster thrill.
The ice was nice on Heisey’s pond. The Heiseys, Jap and Winnie, owned the limestone quarry on the edge of Rheems, and Winnie Heisey’s pond was filled with skaters, including me, especially on Sunday afternoons. Some skaters waltzed around the perimeter of the pond. Some played crack the whip with most landing on their behinds as the tail of skaters at the end of the line flew off in other directions. Some wobbly beginners skated slowly. The expert ones skated forward and backwards. Since it required wiggling the behind just so, I could never master this move.
Just now, can you hear the melody line of The Skater’s Waltz by Emil Waldteufel? His name would fit right in with the listings in a Lancaster County, PA phone book, but Waldteufel was not actually German, but an Alsatian Frenchman inspired by ice-skaters venturing onto the frozen Seine River in Paris. News to me!
In the orchestral piece, composer Waldteufel captures the mood of serene skaters with graceful rising and falling lines but then interjects exuberance with bouncy notes and even some sleigh bells.
The piano doesn’t do the waltz justice, but it should bring back a memory or two!
Tell us your winter memories. Do they involve sledding? Ice skating? Something else?
New year, new opportunity: Vote for My Gutsy Story @
Plain and Fancy 